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Impressionist Landscape Mosaic Mural
Artist David Hilbertson recently completed his first mosaic and photo-documented the process of making it, which was somewhat of a tour-de-force in terms of using improvisation and working around problems. Even the image itself is more improvised than not, and yet the results are akin to an Impressionist painting or a pixelated photograph.
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Still Life Mosaic Series
Louise Roberts recently emailed me to say that she has been teaching herself mosaic using our blog and that she followed my recommendation to make a series of small mosaics of the same size. She also attached some photos of her mosaics, and they are impressive. To me, her mosaics are yet more proof that…
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Box Turtle Mosaic
This mosaic was made on a temporary surface of clear contact paper. I looked at the shell patterns of countless Eastern Box Turtles. The shell pattern of the turtle in my mosaic is all of them and none of them. I had an interesting problem with the backer for this mosaic. I found a way…
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How to Make an Aluminum Mosaic Frame
The aluminum mosaic frame featured in this article was made by artist Natalija Moss from flat bar stock instead of angle stock. Natalija wrote highly-detailed instructions for making a mosaic frame from aluminum angle-stock that should be consulted for step-by-step details and fastener specifications. I wanted to feature her new mosaic in an article because…
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Temporary Surfaces Versus Mosaic Backers
My article about making patterns for irregularly-shaped mosaics shows other work-in-progress steps for the same mosaic I show here in this post. The mosaic is named for its subject, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly. It’s about 6 x 7 x 1/2 inches in size. In this article, I show the creation of the temporary surface and…
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Skeleton’s Rib: How to Mosaic Easily
What does a skeleton’s rib teach us about how to make mosaic more easily? It teaches us only one lesson, but that lesson is probably the biggest tip I have for how to make mosaics more easily and with less tedium and frustration.
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Making Patterns for Irregularly-Shaped Mosaics
My recent mosaic Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Buttefly was mounted on an irregularly-shaped backer. This article summarizes how to use Adobe Photoshop to size and crop the pattern so that it matches the shape of the backer. Previous articles explain how to make a mosaic pattern from any photo using Photoshop’s find-edges filter and how to…
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The Beauty of Cheating in Art
As artists, we are often hypercritical of our own work and can only see the flaws in our art. Often times these “flaws” are details not even noticed by the viewer, and when the are noticed, they aren’t even perceived as flaws. However, sometimes we really do screw up a detail in an otherwise perfect…
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Blue Jay Mosaic
My most recent mosaic Blue Jay is 10 x 10 inches and made from our American-made stained glass on a mortar stone. This mosaic was made by improvising over a pattern.
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Small Mosaiced Objects: Decorative and Utilitarian
Artist Donna Stern has made some small mosaic sculptures that demonstrate the range of possibilities the medium has beyond murals and coverings for larger surfaces. Some of Donna’s recent mosaics are utilitarian (switch covers) while others are strictly decorative (mixed-media fish sculptures), but they are all small and very well done.
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Mounting and Grouting Mosaic Garden Sign
The backer used for this project was a reinforced mortar stone, and thinset mortar was used to mount the glass mosaic, which was on Mosaic Mounting Tape. This mosaic garden sign is displayed under the QR-code mosaic so that passersby know the purpose of the QR code.
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Miniature Mosaic: Mountain Valley Twilight
I continue to work on a series of miniature mosaics mounted on what I call my “mortar stones,” which are irregularly-shaped backers made by spreading thinset mortar on 3 or 4 layers of hardware cloth (steel mesh). My latest in the series is my mosaic Mountain Valley Twilight, which is 9 x 6 x 1/2…