Self-Portrait

Adam (AceBricks) was inspired by Blake Baer's gray-scale mosaic, and decided to make his own, using a SNOT (studs not on top) technique. 

I particularly like the eye and eyebrow in the center of the mosaic.  They have a very clean and crisp line that really makes for a nice focal point. 

Beloved

Awhile back I wrote a post about how Doug Hill experimented with different ways of stacking transparent elements attempts to make gray-scale mosaics.  [Arthur Gugick has also beautifully demonstrated that similar stacking techniques work to expand a color palette.]  Now Blake Baer shows off another mosaic using this technique:

The different shades of gray that are achieved by stacking the transparent 1x1 plates make the portrait come alive with detail.  Blake says there are close to 4000 pieces in this mosaic.  Stacking pieces greatly increases the number of pieces necessary, but I suppose that is compensated by the higher resolution of the mosaic, which will then not need to be as large as it would have been otherwise. 

Here is a detail shot, showing the layering technique:



The mosaic is made from the engagement photo of two very talented LEGO builders, Sean and Steph Mayo.  Although it's not a mosaic, check out their finally-finished Faerie Forest -- it's magnificent!   Blake surprised Sean and Steph with this mosaic at BrickFair last week, where it won "Best Mosaic."  I'd say it was a well-deserved win.
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Addendum:  Actually, the above-mentioned Faerie Forest does contain at least one mosaic.  Here is one of stained-glass redwood tree, on the side of the Forestmen Guild:

Gray-Scale Mosaics

A few weeks ago I talked about DJBaggadonuts' mosaics, which can be found on flickr and on his own website. He has several interesting techniques. One that particularly interested me was his attempt to make gray-scale mosaics.



The basic idea is that he used differing amounts of transparent plates stacked on top of each other to create lighter or darker shades of color. A tall stack of plates would make a darker color; a shorter stack would make a lighter color. It appears he went through a fairly lengthy trial and error process to figure out how to make this work out. One interesting problem that he encountered was shadows from tall stacks of plates disrupting the clarity of the image. You can read about this process of trial and error on his blog, here and here. The latter entry also includes a very ingenious solution for shaking loose 1x1 round plates onto a baseplate in such a way that you can press another plate down onto them and have them stick 32 at a time.

I think it was this idea of stacking transparent plates to change shades of colors that lead to later attempts of stacking plates in different colors to try to achieve a greater color palette. I plan to examine some of these attempts in the future.