Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Tuff Guy Commission

Tuff Guy, stained glass mosaic, 16" x 11", 2013 ~SOLD
Above you can see my latest commission. A collage friend of mine commissioned me to create a portrait of her and her husband's Hahns Macow as a present for his birthday. The mosaic is inset in a black, floating frame.

On the left you can see my color concept sketch for the Tuff Guy mosaic.  On the right you can see the beginning stage of my mosaic in progress. The eye and the feathers around it were created with very small pieces of glass, which were impossible to move around with my stubby fingers so I maneuvered them with a thin razor blade.

On the left you can see me holding out of the stained glass flowers I've cut out for the jungle floor. Since Tuff Guy is a girl, I thought that she would like to be surrounded by flowers, I created four of these and fitted them around her tail. The flower petals are created with considerably larger pieces of glass - these larger shapes show of some of the color neat color transitions that often occur in stained glass.  On the right you can see that I've veered away from some of the original composition in my sketch. Sometimes the glass just takes over ... after I created the first set of flowers, it seemed that there should be more flowers than I originally imagined.

On the left you can see me spreading the charcoal grout into all the crevices and on the right you can see the grout setting after the first layer of film has been wiped away.

On the left you can see the grout starts to set and I begin to slowly wipe away the excess.  On the right I am wiping away another later of hazy grout as it keeps on drying.

1 comment:

  1. was this just a gift or did u sell it to your friend?
    your work is very beautiful..how long have u been doing this? do u cut out the petals of your flowers individually and fuse them together? how is it that they stay together like that?

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