Basics of grayscale Opus Pixellatum
This a first post of a series dedicated to my Opus Pixellatum Technique © and the many variations it allows. It resshuffles a post created in my first mosaic blog a few years ago…
Mosaic by numbers ?
The principle is easy : Each number printed on the model corresponds to a color of a grayscale palette.
If one would lay the tiles in the order of the numbers we would have the following progression :
Laying all colors at the same time
Laying every other tiles
When I first started to use Opus Pixellatum, I was pleased of how fast it was to build a really good looking mosaic. One day I decided to wait until I had fully completed laying half the tiles before I’d start laying the other ones. And here is what I saw…
Surprise !
On this portrait of a young Yezidi refugee only half the tiles had been laid…. Our brains can intuit what the whole picture is… That is flabbergasting !
I did not know yet where I was going with that, but I sure intended to seriously investigate this unexpected occurrence !
Here are what Daniel’s eyes would look like with half the tiles laid :
Revelation !
Key to the unlocking of Opus Pixellatum’s potential is not so much the fact that it works with half the tiles laid, but that it does with half the tiles NOT laid, and that their spots can be used for something else !
The next posts of this Opus Pixellatum series will explore this. I will systematically explore the subject and will expose each variation in a dedicated post.
In the meantime, enjoy Daniel’s and his mosaic’s smiles !
