I love finding projects that are fairly simple to create, yet- yield a beautiful finished project. This watercolor mosaic artwork is totally that project! In this blog post, you will find all you need to know to create your own visually pleasing watercolor mosaic including steps to create, materials list, key art terms, and finished examples to inspire the process!
What is a mosaic?
A mosaic is an image created by arranging lots of tiny pieces of material. Mosaic art has been explored for thousands of years by artists, dating all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. Mosaics can be created with regular shapes (like a bunch of angular squares) or irregular polygonal shapes. Furthermore, the material used to create a mosaic can range from shattered glass fixed in tile grout to cut pieces of paper glued down.
Materials needed
To create a watercolor mosaic, you will need:
- Watercolor paper
- Watercolor paint
- Paint brushes
- Pencil
- Water cup
- Salt (optional)
- Sheet of paper to mount tiles on
- Scissors
- Glue stick or glue bottle
Key art terms
Some need to know art terminology for this project includes the element of art: shape. Shape is an enclosed 2D space defined in some way. There are two types of shapes: geometric (regular and angular) and organic (free form and curvy).
Mosaic art often uses geometric shapes. Some mosaic art consists of a repeated shaped tile, such as a design made up entirely of diamond shaped tiles of the same size. On the contrary, some mosaic art includes random shaped tiles of varying polygonal forms. Both have the power to create some impressive designs!
Steps to create:
Step 1- Paint your watercolor background. Explore wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry to create varying effects on your paper. Strive for bold, vivid colors.
You may want to explore a limited color scheme of 3 analogous colors (colors next to each other on the color wheel) or just let your palette run wild into a rainbow. You do you!
Before letting it fully dry, you may also want to consider sprinkling a bit of salt on your watercolor picture. The salt will absorb the color gradually to create that lovely starburst effect!
Step 2- Use a pencil to draw your shapes on the back side of your fully dried, painted watercolor background. Consider if you want your mosaic to have either (1) repeated shaped tiles or (2) random shaped tiles. My rule of thumb was that no tiles were larger than my thumb. This helped to maintain a size that was not too large and not too small.
Step 3- Begin glueing tiles down to another sheet of paper. This examples shows a water paper mount but you may also want to explore another color.
A glue stick or white glue is ideal for this step. As you glue down your tiles, be sure to strive for (1) consistent spacing in between tiles and (2) no overlapped tiles. A good goal is to make the spacing between tiles about the width of a pencil.
Finished examples:
Here are some finished examples from my middle school students. I love all the variety of approaches, colors and compositions.
Thanks for checking out this blog post. I would love to see your creation if you use these steps to make a watercolor mosaic of your own. Feel free to tag me on Instagram and possibly get featured in this site! Also, please follow Make a Mark Studios on Facebook to keep up with the latest posts! Thanks in advance!
-Stephanie Villiotis, creator of Make a Mark Studios