Pear Shaped

With all the excitement of Shadow, I don't always keep up with things - so true to form I had forgotten my camera the second week of the mosaic class with Laura K Aiken. So this entry will be for the last two weeks. I started this post here if you want to see where it started. My hope was to learn the technique of mosaic and see if I could use it in my tapestry weaving. I learned a great deal and I'm excited about the mosaic itself. I just love learning new things and creating. Is there a better way to spend a Saturday AM? Okay maybe at the lake with a brand new dog, but that's another story.

The second week of class I worked on the table cloth below the pear. Here were just two values of the teal that allowed for the shadow of the pear. I did add in a number of small decorative bits (forgive me Laura for not remembering their name!) They were mostly circular where the mosaic glass was rectangular. Working to integrate those two shapes took all day! One of the things I love about classes is getting a true appreciation of how much it takes to create something like this. Whatever a mosaic artist charges - it's worth every penny!
The third class involved the background. The color is purple and the color value did not have quite enough to cover the space, so I blended it with a slightly darker value. It was fun just to make a pile and start gluing them in place. It's almost like a jigsaw puzzle where I look for the right piece - except I get to decide what the right piece is!
The glass tiles are quite varied. The thicknesses depend on the tile and how I cut it - which was completely random! Then the choice of which side of the tile to use can change is it is a solid colored, striped, flat, etc. While there is a plan, the tiles really "make as many decisions" as I do.
And here is the finished piece. I was able to finish the background on the third day. The studio has a couple of skylights and the sun was straight down on the piece in the last half hour. I loved how the glass gleamed. The next step is to frame it!
From here my thoughts are to recreate this with paper, but shift the colors - i.e. teal pear, purple tablecloth and red background. Then also to recreate in tapestry again shifting the colors. I had started this thinking that the mosaic would be my cartoon, but I've now decided to just create little blocks within an area and let the yarn dictate shapes and color blends. We'll see the piece is small enough there can be lots of experiments. I'm really curious to see how this will change from glass, shiny and 3D to yarn, soft and 2D. I'm sure there will some things lost and others found!