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Sizing Your Mosaic
Once you have a design you would like to create in mosaic, the next step is to determine how large to make it. The minimum size a mosaic can be is determined by the finest detail to be depicted in the image. I recommend trying to render that one finest detail first to determine if…
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Van Gogh’s Cat Mixed-Media Mosaic Sculpture
Artist Peter Vogelaar has been at it again, and this time he has managed to surprise me. His recent mixed-media mosaic sculpture Van Gogh’s Cat has a plinth that steals the show in my opinion. The plinth on which the cat is standing is a mosaic-covered cylinder that seamlessly combines Van Gogh’s Starry Night and…
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Fundamentals of Mosaic Composition
I recently completed a mosaic titled Woodpecker Forest, which shows a pileated woodpecker on the side of a pine tree in a forest carpeted with capensis flowers. I think this composition is a good teaching example because it demonstrates several fundamentals of visual art. There is strong value contrast (light-dark) contrast in both the figure…
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Pileated Woodpecker Mosaic
My Pileated Woodpecker mosaic was made by improvising over a pattern. I created the pattern from a photo collage that I made in Photoshop.
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Stained Glass Improvised Mosaic
I made a mosaic of a pileated woodpecker by improvising over a pattern. Below is a video of the process of laying up the mosaic on a temporary surface of sticky contact paper.
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Classic Tattoo Design Mosaics
Artist Sheldon Stehman‘s tattoo-inspired work demonstrates the vitality of the mosaic medium and how surprisingly well it accommodates contemporary pop-culture designs and themes. Sheldon uses classic tattoo designs as models for his mosaic interpretations. I think that was an inspired decision.
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Variations on a Theme: Insight Mosaics
Artist Natalija Moss rebuilds Honda Insight hybrid cars, and she also makes mosaics of them using stained glass. Here are a few Honda Insight mosaics she made years ago. Unfortunately, Natalija didn’t take definitive photographs of each them, and so the images in this article were all created from the group photo using Photoshop. Even…
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Kingfisher Mosaic: Improvising over a Pattern
I made a video that shows how to translate an image into mosaic by improvising loosely over a pattern. The pattern I used for this demonstration was the pattern I created quickly using Photoshop for a friend.
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How To Clean Up After Mixing Grout Or Mortar
I made a video showing how to clean up the spreading tools and bucket after mixing up grout or thinset mortar. My method only requires a cup or two of water from a spray bottle and some downcycled plastic grocery bags.
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Secret Tip for Improving Your Mosaics
Mosaic tile is laid one tile at a time, and the process can be distracting artistically. The mind becomes focused on fitting small pieces together instead of seeing the image as a whole. Fortunately there are ways around this problem.
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Make Quick Mosaic Patterns from Any Photo
Recently a friend of mine asked for a mosaic pattern for a kingfisher and the materials to make it. He made this request at the eleventh hour when he discovered that it would be raining the entire weekend of his family’s beach trip. I literally had to get the pattern and the tile shipped the…
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Grout Line as Design and Figurative Element
Natalija Moss’s latest Honda Insight mosaic is a great example of stained-glass mosaic where the grout line is used as a figurative element and as an element visual framing. Natalija is a self-taught artist and mosaicist just like me, and she also rebuilds Honda Insights by restoring interiors and rebuilding the battery system with newer…