Mosaic Coloring

Mosaic artwork is a picture or pattern produced by arranging together small colored pieces of hard material such as stone, tile, or glass. I am fascinated by this art form. I just came back from a trip to St. Petersburg where I saw some of the most beautiful mosaics in the world.

Picture of a Mosaic design in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg

From its roots in ancient Greece through modern times, the styles and materials evolved and varied widely but the beautiful and intricate art continues to awe us through the years.  There are some beautiful mosaics done by cutting pieces out of magazines, sorting the pieces into color groups and glue it back to form mosaic patterns. Still a lot of tedious cutting and glueing. So I am excited to receive the Mosaic Art coloring book by Lantern Press as a present from a dear friend who knows I always like to experiment with different coloring arts.

picture of the Mosaic Art coloring book by Lantern Press

This book contains drawings inspired from nature – animals, sea creatures – in a Mosaic style. The pages are single sided and perforated. No worries about bleed-through. All you need to do is add color, much easier than laying tiles, rocks or glass!

A few tips

  1. at least 3 colors for each subject – the beauty of mosaic is that it is made of of tiny shapes of whatever material is used like tile. Variation in color is expected and makes the piece beautiful. Hence when we color a mosaic we need to have a variation of colors to mimic this effect. 
  2. start with the lightest colors first, you can easily change a light color into a dark color later on but not the other way around
  3. the same rule for shading and depth applies. Darker colors along the base of the flower petals for example.
  4. You don’t have to color every single little shape. It is fine to leave some whites. You can also change the shape of the patterns. Look at the wings of the butterfly, I decided that there were way too much details along the edge of the wings in the original drawing. I used a black brush pen to cover some parts of it to end up with a pattern of black with white spots. Demo showing how the shapes for the butterfly mosaic are altered

Most importantly mosaic coloring takes away some of the dilemmas of what to do for a background, it’s all drawn in little shapes for you. Just add colors, be bold, experiment with wild colors that you might not use before.

Happy coloring!

3 comments on “Mosaic Coloring

  1. I knew you would work your magic with this Coloring book! Gorgeous!

  2. Betty thank you so much for sharing your amazing blog and I just had to tell you how much I loved this article! I have put the coloring book on my wish list and printed out your coloring tips. You are such a beautiful artist and so thoughtful to share your love of color!
    Blessings,
    Melitta

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