Check out the stunning Papillion below from Donna Van Hooser of Sun Dog Mosaics. You can see more of her lovely works over at
Flickr, or on her main site at
Sun Dog Mosaics.
I have blogged on Donna before. I love her mosaics because of the movement or andamento in her work. A lot of pet portrait artists like to say that they focus on the eyes because they are the
"window to the soul", well yea ... duh. I have seen this so many times in artist bios that it is starting to sound like a trite sound bite in my brain. With that said I do have to acknowledge Donna's ability to create realistic and soulful eyes in mosaic, because it is no easy task. Mosaic materials are less fluid than paint, they are chunky and I find it hard to achieve the same level of detail with glass or tile that one can achieve with painting or drawing tools. Donna's mosaic pups have lovely eyes with all elements present, the iris, pupil, highlight, and even a little of the corner-whites when needed. She seems to have no basic formula for this and each dog's eyes turn out very unique. The work she did of her parent's dog
Floyd even has a bit of a droop and some pink showing under the eyes.
Donna has a bold graphic style and her dogs are often created on top of simple bold color grounds. In the work above you will notice that the movement of the blue tiles in the background serves to pull you back into the subject ... this piece is all about Brandi. Donna is obviously 100% focused on her subjects and not just trying to impress us with her masterful mosaic techniques ... but of course,
impress she does.
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I know I said I was going to focus on local Dallas mosaics this month, but last week was crazy and I did not get a chance to get out and shoot the works I wanted to shoot.
I want to get over to the museum and shoot the work below by
Miguel Covarrubias. Maybe soon I will get out of the studio with the camera so I can do some local mosaic reporting for you guys.
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