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 though these three mosaics are different sizes, they are still a great example of how to use a series as a way to hone technical skill.

Each of these mosaics depicts a Honda Insight from a different perspective, but they all use the same technique of depicting the seams between auto body panels as a grout line.

Working by Series

Working in a series is the best way to improve your art.

Why figure something out only to use it once?

There is confidence gained by struggling through a problem for the first time and figuring it out.

There is also confidence to be gained by working through the problem a few more times and experiencing how much easier it is each time.

Consolidate your understanding before moving one.

Otherwise you will likely have to start from scratch the next time you encounter the problem because you don’t remember all the details of the solution.

Variations on a Theme

Variations on a theme makes a series more interesting.

All of these cars have the same grout line panel construction, but they are in different perspectives.

The artist gets better at the technique of using grout lines as seams between body panels by repetition, but the actual shapes and rendering are completely different.

That difference between each perspective keeps things interesting for the artist’s mind, while the actual method of rendering is the same.

Variation allow you to cash in on “practice makes perfect” without the drudgery.

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