Yin and Yang

Sharon Prue made this lovely Yin-Yang mosaic for BrickFair Alabama.



I really like the juxtaposition of the transparent colors against the dark black background.

(I found this posted at GodBricks, which is always worth a read.)

Happy New Year!

I don't know that much about Chinese New Year. I did once march in the Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco, and it was wild and exciting, with lights and noise and masses of people, some of whom liked to throw fireworks practically under our feet. My best friend Google tells me that this year the Chinese New Year is January 23, and Rack911 uploaded these adorable characters to celebrate.



I found that the use of mosaics of Chinese characters in the background really added to the presentation.

King of the Squiddies.... and of the Mosaics

While I think of Dave Shaddix as the King of the Squiddies, he actually has completed a large amount of mosaics, too. His most recent one is a portrait of Albert Einstein:



He does, happily, also have a mosaic of Squidman:



One of my favorites is this mosaic of bowling pins on the wall of a bowling alley:



And then there is this Spock mosaic, which was autographed at the Phoenix ComicCon by Leonard Nimoy himself! How's that for combining two nerdy interests in one fell swoop?



You can find many more mosaics (including the "I Want You" mosaic that Casey previously blogged) in this set on flickr.

Forever Enshrined Behind Some Old Glass Pane

Barney Main (SlyOwl) made this scene for an entry in an Iron Builder competition. For the contest he was required to use the yellow triangle piece in each creation. The triangles made for very nice medals, but for me the highlight of the MOC was the mosaic portrait.



It uses bricks and plates heading in several directions in order to give the impression of a soldier in an old, tattered photograph. All together it makes for a rather poignant scene.

While on the topic of Barney, I should mention that he was featured extensively in the latest LEGO Ideas Book. I received this book for Christmas, and it is packed with wonderful models from several people I have "met" in the online LEGO community. It also includes an extensive mosaic section, which I will try to cover in a future post.

LEGO Logo Graffiti

Tyler Clites (Legohaulic) recently posted this little mosaic that he built ten years ago when he was 14. It is the LEGO logo done in graffiti style. When I first saw it, I expected it to be much larger than it actually is.



I found some other mosaics in his photostream too. The first one shows lettering on a Bible. I was particularly impressed with the gold he used, since that color is available in many fewer parts, which are generally much harder to work with.



I also notice that his buddy icon is a mosaic incorporating the L and the H from his user name.




Clever!

Sirens-Of-Titan's Castle Mosaics

I love to see bits of mosaics and patterns incorporated into larger LEGO creations. Alex P. (Sirens-Of-Titan) has been making some incredibly neat castle scenes over the past year, and my favorite parts are always the bits of mosaics that he incorporates into the design. These bits can be found on floors, walls, windows, and doors, and add lots of visual interest to the larger creation.

One of my favorite examples is in his Tower of the Arcane, where mosaics are used as pictoglyphs that hold secrets of magic:



Another one of my favorites is the City of Omurtag, which features mosaics running up, down, and all around its walls and floors.



The throne room for that Dwarven City is also covered with mosaicky goodness:



And finally, here is an image that shows mosaics used for a rug as well as for stained-glass windows:



Be sure to check out Alex's photostream for all sorts of fantastic castle MOCs. I also collected some of the best examples of his incorporations of mosaics into a flickr gallery, which you can see here.

31 Flavors of LEGO

Ryan H. (LDM) has been making copies of various album covers out of LEGO. His most recent one is a mosaic that incorporates 31 different LEGO colors. Here you can see his mosaic on the left, and the original album cover (Narrow Stairs by Death Cab For Cutie) on the right:



I'm not sure I could even give the names of 31 different LEGO colors, let alone use them all in a single mosaic. I have plans to write-up some techniques that different people have used to increase the palette of available colors for mosaics. Ryan here demonstrates one of the simplest: just make use of the wide variety of colors already available. There have been quite a few new colors introduced lately, which is great for potential creations (but not so great on the wallet!).

Never Too Old to Rock (or Brick)

I thought the lettering on this Homer Simpson mosaic by Hans Demol (hd_lego) was quite nice. The black-and-white color scheme with gray accents also seems very effective to me, making for a bold and entertaining image.

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.

Windows to Another World

Ever since I started receiving Brickjournal Magazine at the beginning of 2011, I got the idea to start sharing a few of the great findings Joe Meno and his crew gather up each issue. In each issue or so, you can spot around 3-4, and the last issue, #17, a few really caught my eye.

Lego Certified Professional, Nicolas Foo, created these brilliant 'Imagine Posters' mosaics that really have to be seen.

As you can see, the mosaics combine the background imagery with the Lego poster to seamlessly (or attempt to seamlessly) merge. The Lego colors really work nicely with the background especially with the second poster.


If you haven't read Brickjournal before, I highly suggest trying at least one issue out. It's filled with interviews, instructions, and galleries that me and my little brother like to read and look at from time to time. You can read more up on the posters in issue #17 by checking out Brickjournal here. And in case you'd like to read the blog article where the pictures were found, it is located here. Nicolas Foo also does some other amazing work, so be sure, if you have time, to check out his blog here.

And no, Brickjournal didn't pay me to do this. ;-D

Happy New Year!