The Human Form in Mosaic by Elaine M.Goodwin

My decision to subscribe as an associate with Amazon has been a wise one and that's not because of the possibility to earn money from this program but mainly because I get to scour and dig out great MOSAIC BOOKS like this one! This book should be a must if you want to explore ways to render the human form with mosaic tesserae. The name of the author should be your guarantee. Elaine M. Goodwin. 

Book description:

"The Human Form in Mosaic" is an original and revelatory exploration in the hands of an accomplished artist and author, using the human form as a means to introduce the reader to the technique of mosaic-making. The author guides the reader through the step-by-step process of individually cutting and placing 'tesserae' - the small pieces of marble, gold, glass and ceramic that go to make up mosaics - to articulate the human form, both the body and the face."

Textile details from Dolce & Gabbana Fall Winter 2014 Tailored Mosaic

    Images from swide.com

D&G Mosaic Women vs. Theodora's Court

Year 2013, Milan, Dolce & Gabbana "Tailored mosaic" collection

 

Year 547, Ravenna - Theodora and her court, Byzantium

Is it maybe time for a film on Theodora, Empress of Byzantium? Screenwriters, writers, ghost-writers, producers, directors: Get right on it.

Pictures from D&C's Winter 2014 "Tailored mosaic" collection

If you google "Dolce Gabbana tailored mosaic" you'll see that most of the articles regarding this superb collection have been posted 24/02/2013, so this is really "fresh". See my post from last night right HERE.

And to think I have been blogging about Byzantine mosaics for almost three years now...


Images from: 
www.times.co.uk
dianepernet.typepad.com  
www.nymag.com 
www.leiweb.it 
www.swide.com
www.dolcegabbana.it

MOSAIC IS KING! They finaly did it. I was expecting this would happen one day soon and it did! See this video and you will know what I mean.

First it was a flame, pretty intense one, sparked by Chanel with the Byzance Collection and now there's a FIRE burning out there for MOSAIC and I'm feeling, in a silly and childish way, even though Chanel or D&C don't know this blog exists, part of this "mosaic" fashion trend.

Just think that only yesterday I decided to go back to my old golden mosaic background. That had nothing to do with the D&C mosaic collection. I just wanted to go back to the basic and neutral background because it provides the best setting of what Mosaicology has been about. I don't now about the near future.

I'm not 100% sure about how much gold I will be showing you but a little voice is telling me there's some posh mosaic coming up soon.

video via Diary of a Clotheshorse

Barcelona

Here's one very impressive and creative photo of a mosaic detail from Barcelona.

Via Barcelona Photo Blog.

Emerald Green Pantone 2013: Let's get inspired the mosaic way

Emerald green mosaic mural

via

Mosaic dress of unquestionable excellence by Julia Richie

via

 
Beautiful translucent tiles from ETSY

via

Glazed tiles from the pillars at the temple of the emerald Buddha in Thailand

via

Emerald green stock digital mosaic background photo

via

Emerald and gold glass tile perfect as a pendant

via

Curtain pole

via

Green looks great in this master suite

via

I have always loved green and now I love it even more! What about you?

GUEST POST: Celebrities and mosaic art (some considerations)

By Eric
Blog: Bored Neoclassical Guy
Site: www.oldmosaics.com

I was recently considering the trend in mosaic art to render celebrities. A celebrity work is great because it instantly communicates to the viewer that the work is either a good likeness, or not.  Everyone becomes a member of that special club that recognizes the art for what it is. One cannot get that kind of result with a mosaic depicting fuzzy clouds, or strange abstract geological features.

Of course, 'celebrity work' doesn't mean that the celebrity creates the art. Maybe they would be worth more if the mosaic was a celebrity self-portrait?

 

I began to list out the mosaics of celebrities that came to mind. Popular works, like the portrait of Amy Winehouse by Jason Mecier, used pills for tesserae. 

 

This choice of pills for tesserae really drives home one of the causes of the demise of the celebrity, which was very clever to tie those things together.

Let me Ctrl-Break it down for you… The Australian artist WBK (Guy Whitbey) uses images of keyboard keys to render famous people.  He uses photo images of old keyboard keys to do the mosaic, very clever! As the old expression goes, a million monkeys typing for a million years would still not come up with works like this. Maybe this is because a monkey would be interested in eating the keyboards?

Ed Chapman in the UK has created many nice mosaics of celebrities with recycled items. The subjects he has chosen to represent happen to be celebrities that have also thrown things away, logical connection right? Doesn’t the result remind you of fractured egg shells, like one might find in the trash? 

Below, the gifted artist Vojna Bastovanovic seems to have perfectly recreated one of the celebrity film stars of ‘101 Dalmations’. I recently phoned Pongo the dog about this wonderful portrait work.  While the star and his agent didn’t comment specifically on the art, the happy barking indicated a general sense of approval.

      

I have also tried the celebrity mosaic to a lesser degree with my creation of a Scarlett Johansen mosaic.  I used mostly rocks on the mosaic. While I'm not entirely sure, I would imagine that Scarlett has touched rocks at some point in her life. Was it clever to tie those things together?

 

After a look at what is out there from recent times, my thoughts turned to the history of it all.  For how long have mosaic artists been patterning their work from the images of celebrities? I did some quick research and found a few earlier celebrity mosaics.

Here is Justinian Bieber by an unknown artist circa 500 A.D. As it probably does for you, the resemblance is quite scary to me, for many reasons.

Constantine was also very popular in his day…

In any case, celebrity mosaics have been around for a while and probably always will be. But, it’s interesting that in the past year I think we’ve seen more than normal.

Eric (eric@oldmosaics.com)