Dandelion Wishes

Well this week sure has been a long time coming, huh?  I’m rather embarrassed that I am well over a week late with this.  The reason?  I could not settle on a background.  I had the head and the dandelion done with time to spare last week but have struggled for an additional week now trying to get a background done.  I had started 3 different backgrounds and torn them out already, so even though I am not thrilled with this one it stayed. Does anyone else do things like that?  The good news is that while I was procrastinating on finishing up the background on this piece I got everything except the background done on the next piece so I should have it posted within the next day or two (barring another background block!)

I also have to add that I think this is by far the worst photo of a mosaic I have ever taken.  The decline of my camera seems to be accelerating. I will try taking another tomorrow in the daylight to see if I can get a more accurate representation.

This piece was done direct on MDF with Weldbond. The black between all the spirals in the background is grout.  The face and the dandelion were both grouted with a mixture of nutmeg and white grout.  On the dandelion seeds I dotted white grout and then smudged it out a little bit into the black grout to help them look a little fuzzier and stand out a bit from the background (though they still blend more than I would have liked them to.)

Materials: Stained glass, fused glass gem (earring)
Size: 8″ x 13″

OK, I better go get cracking on the background of the other piece so hopefully I can get caught up again! 

Beth

Goldfish

Gosh, the photo of this piece really is not great - it’s much nicer in person.  (update 1/19 - I updated the photo to a slightly better one, though it still is not great) I’ve been having trouble with my camera lately and can’t seem to get good photos unless the light is exactly right.  I may try to snap a new photo tomorrow during daylight hours and see if I can get a better one.

At any rate, I discovered that I can melt my smalti scraps from other projects in my kiln and then reuse them, so that’s what I did this week.  Interestingly, the reds, oranges and yellows in the goldfish all came from the melted scraps from last week’s mosaic.  It seems that when the pink and coral smalti scraps are fired they change color and turn vibrant red, orange and yellow.  Once I saw the colors I decided they would be perfect for a cheery goldfish mosaic, so here it is.  I also fused some transparent turquoise blobs for the centers of the “bubbles.”

Here are the details:

Materials: Smalti, fused gems, vitreous
Size: 7″x 12″

Until next week!  Thanks for stopping by.

Beth

Maria

Rather than doing an extra mosaic this week to make up for the week I missed right after Christmas I opted for doing a mosaic that was larger than my usual weekly projects.  I figured that one mosaic nearly twice the size as usual would work to catch me up.  I’ve gotta say it was really refreshing to work on something bigger than I have been doing!  It’s much easier to do shading and details on a larger piece than a tiny one.

When I sat down to start planning this week’s mosaic I knew I wanted to do a smalti portrait.  Unfortunately, though, I was sufferering from an acute case of LSCC (lack of smalti color choices )  I had 3 shades of pink, a medium coral, lavender, tan and black with a couple pieces of reddish brown.  I decided to go ahead and wing it and try to make a portrait using the colors I had even though they seemed too bright/weird for a portrait.  I’m quite pleased with how it came out, although I really wish I would have had one shade between the darkest pink and the dark red-brown of the lips and the neck shadow.  I think the dark reddish brown works OK on the lips, but the neck shadow came out looking a bit like a nasty birthmark or something because there is so much contrast between it and the pink of the neck.

Overall, though, I think this is one of my favorite portraits I have ever done.  I feel like it is the closest I have come to capturing a relatively natural looking facial expression, and I am particularly happy with the eyes.  I enjoyed the challenge of drawing the head slightly tilted up rather than straight on, too.

Mouths and noses still give me fits.  I think I did a better job of shading the bridge of the nose this week than I have in other portraits. (Compare it to Merideth - week 5)  The mouth, however, looks a bit “stuck on” instead of like it is part of the face.  I have decided to spend all of my drawing time in the coming week working exclusively on mouths to try to improve that area a bit.  I think I get tripped up because of the lips being a different color than the surrounding skin…it is harder for me to visualize the shape of the whole mouth area rather than just the colored part of the lips. 

 As I was just typing that last bit I had a brainstorm as to what might help me.  I may try putting some concealer on my own lips to make them the same color as my skin, setting up a mirror for reference and drawing some mouths in different expressions with the lips the same color as the skin.  Perhaps once I had gotten the hang of that it would become easier to eventually add color to the lips while still keeping the correct shape of the whole mouth area.  If I do decide to try that this week I’ll let you know how it goes and if it was helpful or not.

Here are this week’s details:

Materials: Smalti
Size: 8.75″ x 11″

You can click the image to see a big version.  I hope you like it!  See you next week,

Beth

Fly on the Wall

My apologies to anyone who may have stopped by and noticed that I didn’t get a mosaic posted last week.  It was a crazy week with the holidays, a big re-launch of my tile site, a couple of mosaic deadlines, and assorted other stuff and I didn’t get my mosaic done.  In order to keep up I plan to try to complete an extra mosaic this week sometime, but for now, here is last week’s mosaic a week late.

I really had fun doing this one.  The wings are clear iridized glass that has white and brown paint underneath to give them the appearance of some texture.  There is also some iridized glass in the body of the fly, although it didn’t show up well in the scan. 

I think one of my favorite parts of this mosaic is the background.  I was going to take the lazy way out and just do straight lines across the background to save some time, but now I am so glad I decided to go with the circles instead.  I think they help to add some interest to what could otherwise be a fairly boring mosaic.

The details:

Measurements: 6.5″ x 7″
Materials: Stained glass, fused glass gems (tiny gems for the eyes)

Beth

Wallflower

I decided to go with the title “Wallflower” for this week because it came out quite washed out looking….sort of like the subject just blends with the background and doesn’t want to stand out too much or draw attention to herself.  That wasn’t my original intention, however I think the title fits.

When I started this piece I wanted to play around with using more than one color family to create a flesh tone.  While the flesh tone didn’t come out at all realistic (unless she is sick or dead lol) I do think the tones/values blend OK.  The peachy-orange color I used is a bit too saturated and sticks out from the others and there are some places where the contrast between light and dark is too sharp, but overall I think it is OK.  I used glass in shades of blue, green, peachy-orange (as mentioned already), pink, pale peach and purple.

I find it difficult to turn off the part of my brain that sees colors and just look at the values, so this was a good challenge for me.  I think it is particularly difficult in a piece this small.  With a larger mosaic it seems like it is easier to see the whole instead of just the pieces…perhaps because you have to look at larger mosaic from futher away to be able to see it all at once and it gives a more broad perspective.  I shrunk the picture of this one down so you can see that from a distance the colors and tones do blend OK and make more of a picture.

 Things I would change?  I would lighten the line from the nose to the corner of where the mouth would be…or even better would have just tried to using shading to create the illusion of that line.  I would also position the subject differently on the board since I cut the face in a very akward place. I think it would have made for a stronger piece with either more of the other eye area showing or straight down the middle of the nose instead of where I chose to cut it.

Here are this week’s details:

Materials: Stained glass, vitreous (once again, I so admire anyone who has the patience to work regularly with vitreous…what a pain in the butt! Definitely not my cup of tea.)
Size: 6″ x 8″

Comments, critiques etc. are more than welcome.  Until next week!

Beth

Poodle Chasing a Bunny

So it’s a poodle chasing a bunny.  At least this week I was closer to on time  

Here are the details:

Materials: Stained Glass
Size: 6.75″ x 8.5″

As always you can click the small image to view a larger version.  Thanks for stopping by and see you next week!

Beth

My Livingroom

Well, so much for being on time this week!  I apologize for not having this one up on time if anyone stopped by.  I got a late start on it and then it took me much longer than I had anticipated. I tell you, I never realized how big and clumsy my fingers were until I started trying to lay some of these little tiny pieces! ha ha

This week I was trying to come up with an idea and decided to check out the project section of the Wet Canvas forum for some inspiration.  If you haven’t been there yet, be sure to spend some time poking around http://www.wetcanvas.com .  The projects basically are challenges that you can sign up for that help you try something different than you would normally do with your art.  For example, it might be something like painting an all white winter scene without using white paint.  While I didn’t actually sign up to participate in the project, the one I chose to do was to draw/paint/etc. an indoor scene from life.  It’s something I have never done and I thought it would be a fun challenge.  I chose to do the corner of my livingroom (partly because I like the way it looks and partly because it is pretty much the only part of my house that is clean right now   )

I wasn’t ambitious enough to drag all my mosaic gear up from the basement studio to actually mosaic from life,  plus I didn’t think it would be the best idea to be flinging pieces of glass all over my livingroom.  However, I did do the drawing from life and then the mosaic from memory.  I also did a whole lot of running up and down the stairs to look at highlights or lighting and refresh my memory for the mosaic. Also, just FYI, our wall are actually dark gray and not blue, but since I didn’t have any gray glass I did them in blue. 

This project was lots of fun and I’d highly recommend trying it if you are feeling stumped for ideas.  I always think it is amazing how mosaics can make even the most boring, mundane scene or object look cool.

 Here are this week’s details:

Materials: Stained Glass
Size: 6.5″ x 9″

Comments or critiques are more than welcome.  See you next week!  Beth

Pinkish-purple Flowers

I’m late again this week, but I should be back on track in the coming weeks.  I was still scrambling to try to finish my entry for the SAMA juried show, but didn’t get it done in time to enter.  Today is the deadline and I still have a LONG ways to go on it.  I’m disappointed, but decided it was better to not rush the piece at the end since I have worked so hard on what I have done on it and am happy with how it is coming out.  Next year, I guess.

This week’s mosaic is quite out of character for what I typically like to do, but I was in the mood to do something “girly” so I went for it.  I’ve been thinking about how I tend to get caught up in creating details and sometimes lose sight of the whole with some of the subjects that I create.  This week I forced myself to leave out pretty much all of the detail that I would have normally put into the flowers and just tried to focus on using colors and shapes to suggest detail. 

 Though I can’t decide if the finished piece works or not (I’m still up in the air on it) I do think it was a good exercise for me.  Thinking of the whole object at once rather than just putting together a bunch of details until they form the whole object should help me with things like creating more realistic form and shading in future pieces. Don’t get me wrong - I’ll always be a detail junkie, but at least now I hopefully will have a heightened awareness of the whole form as well.  I hope that makes sense….I can’t seem to find the right words to explain exactly what I am trying to say.

Anyhow, details:

Materials: Stained Glass
Size: 4″ x 12″

I promise I’ll try to be on time next week!  Thanks for stopping by!  Beth

Chloe

Well I’m late, late, late with this week’s mosaic, but I am really pleased with it.  I’ve been working on a huge mosaic (big for me anyway…2′x3′) trying to get it done in time to submit for the SAMA juried show which has a Nov. 30th deadline.  I got so involved in that project that I sort of forgot about my mosaic a week and didn’t get started on it until much later than I should have.

At any rate, this week  I wanted to build a bit on what I practiced with last week’s mosaic and try to bring the more precise cuts and awareness of the tile direction into a portrait.  By keeping the color scheme so simple I thought it would allow me to focus more on the technical aspects rather than spending so much time thinking about shading like I normally do.  I think it was a good exercise for that, and now that it is done I can see places where I should have changed the direction of the tile or gone a different route.  All in all, though, I really am happy with it….in fact, I think it is one of my favorite mosaics I have done.

I do a have a question that hopefully someone out there will be able to help me with.  Grouting has never been one of my strong points.  For some reason no matter how long I work at it or which method I try it always comes out looking not-so-perfect.  With this piece I grouted two colors…black and white.  I grouted the black first, taped it off with blue painter’s tape, then grouted the white.  Then I had to go back in and try to touch up some of the edges because the black and white grout didn’t meet in places where my tape had overhung a little too far.  I wanted really sharp edges where the two grout colors met, but instead I have places where the black grout seeps out into the grout lines a tiny bit into the white, and vice-versa.  I was wondering if anyone has any cool tricks on how to get perfect grout lines when grouting more than one color?  I’d love to hear them!

 At any rate, here are this week’s details:

Materials: Stained Glass
Size: 6″ x 9.25″

You can click the picture for a larger version.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Beth

Untitled

I’m actually on time this week!  I can hardly believe it.

I rarely do non-representational art, however, this week my main goal was to focus on technique.  Sometimes I get so caught up in the picture I am trying to make that I overlook the basic “rules” of mosaics…ignoring things like tiles spacing, andamento, texture, etc.  I am getting ready to start a larger mosaic and wanted to spend some time practicing basic technique on a smaller scale mosaic before jumping in on the new piece.

I think part of why I began to ignore the flow of a mosaic is because I work primarily with stained glass.  Because the glass comes in big sheets instead of little tiles it is much easier to cut a  big shape that you need to fill a space than to use little tiles flowing together to build that shape.  Gosh, I hope that makes sense.

When I started this piece I thought it was going to be quite easy and go quickly.  What I found, though, is that it took much longer than I had anticipated and was much more challenging.  Really thinking about each and every tile and trying to get straight, precise cuts took a lot of planning and concentration.  I had lots of trouble with the vitreous tiles.  I very rarely work with vitreous and found that the bumps and texture on the backs of the tile made it incredibly difficult for me to get straight cuts.  It gave me a whole new appreciation for people who do mosaics with vitreous.

I am happy with how this came out, though, and I really feel like it helped me get my mind “back in the game” on technique.  My challenge now is to apply the rules to a pictorial mosaic…focusing more on the flow of the tiles, the spacing of the pieces and coming up with ways to add texture.  Afterall, one of the most amazing things about mosaics is that you can work more in 3 dimensions instead of just 2 like you would be limited to if you were painting.

A few links to mosaics & mosaic artists that I think have fabulous technique while still being representational:

• Tiffany Studios Mosaic
• Forbey’s Art Mosaics (I particularly love the two landscapes)
• Lilian Broca

I think what I admire most about all of these mosaics is how the tiles flow perfectly with the shape of the subjects, and the artists make it look so effortless.   There are no gaps, awkward looking tiles (ie. weird little slivers either to fill a gap or hanging out on the edge of the mosaic due to poor planning) , and everything flows together so perfectly.  In my opinion this is all due to great technique and is something I really want to strive for in my own mosaics.

You can click the picture of this week’s mosaic at the top of this post to see a larger version.  Here are the details:

Materials: Unglazed porcelain, vitreous, pebbles, handmade ceramic tiles, tumbled bottle pieces (thank Dad!)
Size: 7.5″ x 13.5″

I always welcome comments or critiques.  Thanks for stopping by!

Beth