Category: Art Review
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Mosaic Tables and Interior Design
Artist RJ Spurr recently completed two mosaic tables for his home, and I wanted to share them because the level of craft work is excellent, and the designs are integrated with the color schemes of rooms where they were installed. The great thing about dry indoor mosaics is that you can use wood as a…
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Mosaic Memorial Cross for Maddie
Georgia Art Teacher Connie Wells has been working with her students on a memorial cross project: Highland Christian Academy in Valdosta, GA wanted to remember one of our 8th grade students, Maddie Pitts that recently passed away from cancer in a personal, honorable way. As we constructed a small garden area with a pink bench…
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Choosing Grout Color Using Tile Test Swatches
Tracy Kaplan recently emailed us a picture of her FIRST mosaic, and it is nice solid work, impressive even, especially considering that her instructor gave her some problematic advice concerning the grout color. Tracy’s teacher had recommended a chocolate or nutmeg colored grout, but Tracy wisely considered how a dark brown might cause adjacent tree…
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Mosaic Furniture Pique Assiette Alternative
Mosaic furniture can be made from glass mosaic tile more easily and more affordably than it can be made from pieces cut from antique china and other patterned dinnerware. It’s also much more colorful! The choices available range from bright rainbow colors to soft pastels to different color families, earth tones, black and white. You…
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Repeating Motifs and Abstract Mosaics
Repeating simple designs or motifs is an effective way to make iconic compositions that catch the eye, and you can take this technique to its extreme to produce abstract art where the pattern itself becomes the subject of the art and not just a tool for rendering figures. Karla Conmy’s River Meanders mosaic is a…
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Civil Rights Mural Created At MAS Warehouse
Mosaic Art Supply tries to hire only professional artists from a working-class background, which means people who pursued their art because they were passionate about it and not merely because they had inherited some form of income. This means our workers have various skills and intellectual interests that inform their artwork and make them better…
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Mosaic Saints, Angels, and Icons
Historically, mosaic icons were made with traditional materials like smalti, marble, and gold leaf glass. Those traditional mosaic materials might be preferred if you are trying to make a reproduction that looks historically accurate, but they are more expensive and more difficult to work with. Do You Need Smalti? If you have any latitude in…
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Mosaic Letters and Numerals
You can make mosaic street numbers and signs using a grid, but mosaics made from irregular shapes of non-gridded tesserae are more interesting, especially if you use concentric andamento for the background surrounding the figures. Sara Sommers emailed us some pictures of her mosaic street number plaque, and it is made from cut pieces of…
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Beginner Mosaic Artwork
Mosaic is a great medium for beginners because it is accessible for people who don’t have much confidence in their ability to draw. Images can be rendered merely by arranging tile by trial and error until you like what you see. Of course it helps to have a simple outline or pattern of the image…
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Pet Memorial Name Plaques
For people wanting to make a portrait of their furry friend, I wrote an article on pet memorial mosaics using April Costigan’s work as illustrations of what is possible in terms of capturing likeness. The problem is that for many people, the task of rendering a realistic portrait of their pet is beyond their current…
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Four Elements Garden Mosaic
“Amateur” artist Tobin recently completed his Four Elements garden mosaic, and it is amazing for several reasons, the least of which is the fact that it was created over a span of six years with the artist getting up at 5 am to spend 45 minutes on it before leaving for his day job in corporate…
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Figurative Mosaic Composition Integrated With Shower Tiling
Artist Jen Vollmer recently completed a shower mosaic which features fish and flowing water executed in the same colors as the surrounding mosaic tiling. Jen says that in retrospect, she wishes she would have used a darker grey grout and blue/green glass tiles instead of the light blue, which would have increased the contrast. I’m…