or, the Project That Took Too Long.

…and yet, was definitely worth it in the end!

This Color Theory assignment was to make a monochromatic mosaic. I had to choose a black and white photograph, and then decide which single hue I thought would best suit the subject matter. I choose this very European scene, because I thought its geometry would translate well into mosaic tiles, and there were lots of interesting variations in value (light/dark).

I selected red-violet for the hue I wanted to work with, because it has an element of coolness, yet the warmth of red. In other words, this is a picture of blocks of stone and frigid water, but it still elicits an happy reaction…

The requisite warm-up (not as easy as it looks!!). The top colors, where found in the original photo, shift to those in the the bottom row in the monochromatic mosaic.

So, I located the different values of white to black on the photo, and transferred those shapes onto illustration board. (I was being far too detailed, but I didn’t know it at the time.)

Then, I painted watercolor paper with different values and saturations of red-violet, from whence I would cut out my tiles.

I’d never done a mosiac before, so I wondered how I would cut out the exact shapes of the value areas. I came up with a tracing paper and needle method – making perforations onto the colored paper to guide my exacto knife. So, I had the shapes I wanted on tracing paper, then laid the tracing paper over the color swatches, pinholed the edges of the shapes, then cut them out from the color swatches. Get it? Here’s something of what my tracing paper looked like by the end.

Being unsure of the end result, I used little wads of sticky tack to put down my tiles on the illustration board, in case I should need to change them later. This was both good and bad: I ran out of time to actually glue every piece down before it was time to turn it in. The teacher didn’t notice, though! So it’s all good.

The reward for all my sweat and toil? Seeing this from the back of the classroom during critique. From far away, it looked extremely photo-realistic! Other pieces actually looked like a mosaic. If I EVER attempt a mosaic again, maybe I’ll try to strike a happy balance between the two.

Amendment

I have to add this, it’s so cool. My friend sent me a postcard from France a couple months ago and I just took another look at it. Some things about it looked strangely familiar…

I would recognize those lampposts anywhere now!

So now I actually know what I was painting – le Pont Neuf à Paris!
And I found modern day shot almost identical to the composition I used here.