Backstory: The Human Face

Human faces have always fascinated me. I love the play of shadows and how feelings are expressed so poignantly through the eyes and just a tilt of the head sometimes.

Back in my college days, I took some drawing classes and discovered that I had a knack for drawing people. At the time I was intrigued by classic Hollywood so I did a series of drawings of famous faces. I even took on a poster-sized collage of as many movie stars as I could fit in.

This was a long-term project and worked perfectly as an independent study assignment.

Later, during my pregnancy, I earned some cash drawing portraits of elderly people for their families. One of my sisters worked in a nursing home and made the contacts for me.

I found that I loved wrinkles, especially the subtle shading they required and the depth of living expressed by those ancient eyes.

One of my first mosaics was a face, and although it didn’t turn out quite as lovely as I had hoped, I was undeterred.

"Oliver's Delight": The photographer for my son’s wedding (Jenny Chatterton) snapped a photo of him in a head-thrown-back-full-body laugh and I loved it. As usual with me, I had no idea if or how I could accomplish it, but I went to work. I was particularly worried about the teeth and how they would ever appear smooth.

This is one of the difficulties with mosaic: because the work is detailed, the mosaic artist is usually seeing it close up, but this is not the way it is intended to be viewed.

It is important to remember to periodically step back and view the work from a distance.

I was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out. Although it was an early piece and there are things I would change about it now, it remains a favorite.

Because “Oliver’s Delight” always made me smile when I viewed it, I decided to continue with more smiling faces. I found this one under “public domain images” and named her, “Tickled Pink.”

Another face mosaic with a unique story all its own is “Out Look.” I may offer that backstory in another post.

I’ve made several other face mosaics: a self-portrait of myself as a child and some for the rest of my son’s family. The new baby will have one eventually, I’m sure.

Fellow artist/photographer, Jenny Chatterton supplied the inspiration again for me when I decided to tackle a monochrome image. I was looking for a face that expressed strong emotion and found what I was looking for.

This is an image of a woman fully involved in worship, her face and arms lifted to show her total surrender to the moment.

I love the play of light and dark throughout the mosaic and I especially enjoyed using the black background as shadow.

Since the mosaic is about the emotion and not the action, I named it, “Bliss.”

“Bliss” and “Tickled Pink” are available as originals (or prints if requested).

The movie star poster original is also available (framed) as are prints of the poster. Let me know in the comments if you're interested.