Mosaic tile art project advice needed. Are you a mosaicist?
August 16, 2010 10:50 PM Subscribe
Is anyone here a mosaic tile artist ? I'm looking for a source for mosaic tiles that have a significant range of shading, to construct a monotone tile mosaic from a b&w photo.
All the mosaic tile sources I find have only a limited range of any given color, like light blue, medium blue, and dark blue. I'd like ideally a range of 10 or more equally spaced shades of any given color, like white - 10% grey - 20% grey - 30% grey, etc., down to black. Or any other brilliant suggestions on how to achieve my goal in a different manner. I am completely new to mosaic tiling - assume I know next to nothing.
All the mosaic tile sources I find have only a limited range of any given color, like light blue, medium blue, and dark blue. I'd like ideally a range of 10 or more equally spaced shades of any given color, like white - 10% grey - 20% grey - 30% grey, etc., down to black. Or any other brilliant suggestions on how to achieve my goal in a different manner. I am completely new to mosaic tiling - assume I know next to nothing.
At my previous house I tiled my entire bathroom (floor to ceiling) with sheets of these glass mosaic tiles. The tiles have white, black and three greys, and are pretty inexpensive, at least for glass mosaic tiles. I did shop around a lot though, and ended up haggling the price down at a factory clearance place rather than buying them from the place I just linked.
The plan was to do exactly what you're talking about - to find a greyscale image and decorate one wall of the bathroom with some sort of crazy pixel art.
The key, I think, is finding a source of tiles that gives you a reasonable spread of tones, then adapt your image to match. So you'd take your image in, say, Photoshop, greyscale it, size it to the right number of pixels, then reduce the number of levels/colours/tones to the precise shades of the tiles. The results will look pretty good, even if you only have five shades to work with. But to use the sort of tiles I had (which are about 2cm on a side) you do need to be doing a fairly large image (at least a metre wide/high I would say).
Mosaic tiling with those square glass tiles isn't a lot different to normal tiling. You need a thin bed trowel to spread the adhesive (one with smaller, closer teeth) and a mosaic-specific adhesive, and you end up using about four times as much grout as you'd think.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 2:19 AM on August 17, 2010
The plan was to do exactly what you're talking about - to find a greyscale image and decorate one wall of the bathroom with some sort of crazy pixel art.
The key, I think, is finding a source of tiles that gives you a reasonable spread of tones, then adapt your image to match. So you'd take your image in, say, Photoshop, greyscale it, size it to the right number of pixels, then reduce the number of levels/colours/tones to the precise shades of the tiles. The results will look pretty good, even if you only have five shades to work with. But to use the sort of tiles I had (which are about 2cm on a side) you do need to be doing a fairly large image (at least a metre wide/high I would say).
Mosaic tiling with those square glass tiles isn't a lot different to normal tiling. You need a thin bed trowel to spread the adhesive (one with smaller, closer teeth) and a mosaic-specific adhesive, and you end up using about four times as much grout as you'd think.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 2:19 AM on August 17, 2010
You can build your own mix here.
I'm not quite sure if that's what you had in mind, but we've used Trend Mosaics on a number of commercial jobs and we've been pleased with the product.
posted by elisebeth at 8:09 AM on August 17, 2010
I'm not quite sure if that's what you had in mind, but we've used Trend Mosaics on a number of commercial jobs and we've been pleased with the product.
posted by elisebeth at 8:09 AM on August 17, 2010
You might want to try Artaic, a startup here in Boston that makes custom mosaics using robots. I know the founder, and he is a great guy and the work they do is really top-notch.
posted by dam1975 at 8:32 AM on August 17, 2010
posted by dam1975 at 8:32 AM on August 17, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
I'm not a mosaic artist, but I've worked with friends who are. We've often ordered from Daltile here in San Diego. A quick glance through their product line brings up this series, which has a decent range of hues from white to black. At any rate, I recommend sending an email or giving them a call -- their staff is super helpful, can point you in the right direction, and perhaps even recommend a supplier more local to you.
posted by vespertine at 11:23 PM on August 16, 2010