The Thinking Heart

Despite the challenges brought about by the weather and a variety of interruptions I finally managed to finish the first piece of work of 2013 this morning. Admittedly the snow we had last night and this morning did make me abandon my shed for the comfort of the kitchen to do the final grouting and cleaning off but it's done!
Here's a couple of photos showing the work in progress made in reverse as outlined in the last blog. Basically reverse technique means you apply the pieces to brown paper upside down then apply adhesive to the surface and whatever substrate you're using. Once the adhesive is dry you flip the piece and soak off the brown paper revealing the right side of the mosaic. One of the perils of working this way is that many materials do not look the same - see below where the two sections which look the same here are broken ceramic tile. The real colour of these tiles is pale lilac but they look exactly the same on the back as any other ceramic tile. Colour juxtapositions can be hard to judge working like this especially on large works.

This side is called Heart of Gold as the centre is gold mirrored glass

Ignore the background as I have it on an old chopping board! This shows the head and heart motif in reverse before adhesive has been applied

Here's the final showing the thinking heart motif.

Here's the heart of gold side - you can see the lilac ceramic tiles in all their glory now!