Category: Inspiration
-
Marble Mosaic Restoration
Angela Bortone and Natalija Moss recently restored a marble mosaic interpretation of a detail from Botticelli’s Venus, the well-known Renaissance painting. They used the Hercules Precision Stone Chopping Machine to cut the Mable Mosaic Cutting Strips they used for the work. Note that many colors of our Mable Mosaic Cutting Strips are currently out of…
-
Peacock Redux
My recent blog post about Lonnie Parson’s Peacock mosaic was a cautionary tale about what can happen when you fail to take at least one definitive photo of your finished mosaic. I didn’t want that blog post to be about how to photograph your artwork in optimal light with no foreshortening. I wanted the post…
-
Artistic Style in Mosaic
Artist Ivana Sorrells works at Mosaic Art Supply, and she made a couple of small mosaic plaques using our vitreous glass tile, stained glass, and 8-inch plywood mosaic backer boards, plus a few odd findings from a few other types of mosaic glass. Ivana hadn’t worked in mosaic before these pieces, but she gave it…
-
Mosaics in a Painterly Style
Paints can be blended to any shade or hue, but the mosaic medium requires that an artist render an image in a limited set of fixed colors. The color palettes of molded glass tile product lines are limited to 40 to 60-ish colors, and this limitation seems to encourage novice artists to work in a…
-
Large Mixed-Media Mosaic Mural
Artist Dianne Stearns and her students have created an impressive mixed-media mosaic mural on the exterior of their school in Tuolumne County, California. Too Much Inspiration The mural is a “regional icons landscape collage,” and so naturally it shows local landmarks and regional archetypes, but when you have El Capitan in Yosemite National Park and…
-
Mosaic Flower Pot Planters
Artist Morgan Halford‘s mosaic flower pot planters are colorful geometric abstracts executed with a spooky level of precision. I like that they are exceptions to my general recommendation to work in a looser fashion in the uniformity of the sizing, shaping, and orienting of tiles. TIP: Most people find that they can render images more…
-
Inspiration Versus Reproduction
I once had an employee-artist who became angry with me for encouraging people who didn’t think they could draw to trace artwork or photos to make patterns. I explained that we wanted to reach all skill levels and that included some people who would be attempting mosaic or even art for the first time. I…
-
Knight Park Mosaic Sculpture
Artists Angela Bortone and Natalija Moss have discovered a new way to do huge amounts of extreme physical labor in an unheated loading dock. They call this latest folly the Knight Park Mosaic Sculpture. I know from past experiences with my own large sculptural projects that Angela and Natalija have doubted their own rationality if…
-
Natalija the Mosaic Russian Doll
Most artists are aware of how much personality a work of art can assume during the process of creation, especially when the piece of art requires a long period to complete. Artist Peter Vogelaar says he often spoke to his “Rebirth” mosaic matryoshka sculpture while working on her and referred to her as Natalija. A…
-
Texture and a Sense of Space: the Mosaics of Terry Nicholls
For those of readers who were asking for inspiring examples of no-grout mosaics, I give you the mosaics of Canadian artist Terry Nicholls. I am amazed by Terry’s work and its continuity. It is a very focused exploration of the mosaic medium as a fine art. There is a sense of space that Terry creates…
-
Bas-Relief Plaques and Mosaic Stones
Artist Sandra Arkin’s bas-relief mosaic sign “Art Can’t Hurt You” makes me laugh. Anyone who has ever made a glass mosaic with tiny details has anointed their work multiple times with blood. Am I right, or am I right? Sandra says doesn’t draw or make representations of physical objects in her heart usually, but she…
-
Abstract Mosaics As “Quilt” Elements
Artist Barbara Stutts recently emailed me some photos of her abstract mosaic stepping stones and mosaic-covered river stones, and they resonated with me for several reasons. Barbara says she is relatively new to mosaic, but her abstract mosaics are worth sharing because they are well executed and serve as good teaching examples. In this case,…