Study of Antoni Gaudi Mosaic 2-Masters Class-Week 2

Project two with Junelle Jacobson and Antoni Gaudi in Studying With the Masters (see sidebar) is a paper mosaic, based on a Gaudi work. I chose this vine looking swirl, which Gaudi did with pieces of glass and morter. His mosaics are beautiful...

The Gaudi mosaic that I chose to study...

I used black gesso to seal the page in my mixed media art journal and loosely sketched the design in a white Liquitex paint pen. I don't know why. It just seemed like what I should do at the time. I guess you could say that I followed my intuition...

Using some old hand painted water color paper, which I already had, I cut the pieces and stuck them down with flexible modeling paste, leaving space between them to look similar to grout. I didn't have enough of the green/copper paper to curl the vine all the way in, so I left it in the shape of a question mark...

This is in my journal, hence the white across the top with my notes. Cutting and laying the blue pieces in randomness...

More blue and I've added multi-colored pieces to the center, with one large piece that resembles an egg...

Done! I didn't have a plan for the multi-colored pieces. I just worked it out as I cut and pasted. I now realize that the red/pink tear in the upper corner might should have been in the lower left corner. Oh, well! That's what practice is for!

After I got it finished this far and looked at the whole thing from a distance, it came to me that the blue represented water, the green/copper nature, and the colored pieces, including the "egg" in the center, represented life in all its variations. So the title would be "Water, Nature, Life"!

And then I went and put a burnt umber wash over the whole thing and wiped it off for an "old" effect. That was ok for it all except the green question mark pieces, which were watercolored and hadn't been sealed. The umber absorbed into the paper too quickly to wipe off. Another lesson learned! I still like it. The last thing I did was to put a coat of Plaid Royal Coat Dimensional Magic over the whole thing to give it a "glass" effect, which really made a difference in the look of it.

Incidentally, I'm not using the same materials or exactly the same techniques that either the masters or the teachers used. We are encouraged not to go out and buy every supply that is mentioned, but to use what we already have, so I'm watching the teachers' videos on how they did the works of the masters, then doing my own thing and trying out the techniques that I'm learning on works that speak to me to study. We're not trying to copy anything exactly. It's all about the process! And there's some amazing work being done by the teachers and the students, which is very inspiring.

I am so thankful and glad that my FB friend, Phyllis, share this series of classes on FB, and that I signed up for them. I have already been changed so much, as a person and an artist, and I plan to write a blog post after the last master listing the things I've learned and gotten from this class.

Thank you so much for visiting, and I hope that you're finding the joy in your creativity that I am! :)

Also sharing this post on the sites Creative Every Day and Paint Party Friday (links on the sidebar), where you will find a lot of inspiring work by just clicking on the names!