I will spend this weekend giving Mosaic Lessons, mainly to people that showed an interest at the BEAT Ealing Art Trail. I run lessons on an ad-hoc, request led basis and like to have 3/4 people for the standard lesson. However, I am able to work with larger groups if someone wants a tailor made workshop.
The standard lesson is very much a beginners, basic guide to Mosaic Making. I am not a great one for theory being very much a hands-on, practical person. So we tend to get stuck in straight away with the nuts and bolts of cutting,placing etc.
It is always quite hard to recommend what people should make as their first piece and, to be honest, I still haven’t found the magic answer to that. I generally find that people do tend to be rather over ambitious in their enthusiasm and ideas for a first piece. A friend that came for a beginners lesson bought a picture of Van Gough’s Sunflowers and asked if they would be able to make that in their first lesson – I said “I’ll be really disappointed if you can as I couldn’t and I’ve been doing this for 10 years!” Needless to say, they did make a sunflower but a very, very simplistic version.
I also like to make it clear that a mosaic is it’s own art form and the end result is not going to look like a watercolour painting or a photograph, it is it’s own interpretation. I hope the above does not sound negative but I like to give people a realistic expectation of what they should be able to achieve. The mosaic art form is quite different to what people expect.
I aim for a fun, informative day. I give out lots of information, tips and ideas. It is quite a full on day with a lot to get through. As the lessons are based at my home studio it means I have lots of examples of my work to show as well as all the different styles, tiles and embellishments that I use. People go home at the end of the day quite tired, having learnt a new skill and clutching their prized new piece of home made art.
If you are interested in having a lesson, send me an email and I can send you an Information Sheet with more details.
I am really looking forward to welcoming my ‘students’ this weekend for a great lesson and hopefully some of them may get hooked and end up with a website and Blog of their own, just as I have!
Quote from previous attendee:
“If you are looking for a Basic Mosaic Course for Beginners, Rosanna is your person….she will lead you, very professionally, through everything you need to know to make your first mosaic…… it is a very “full on” day, but at the end of it, you will come away with your own magical personal mosaic” – Linda Edrich
I felt this was a good reason for a special celebration so I enlisted the help of my good friend and very talented film maker, 
When I started to have an interest in mosaic I 
I am not sure why this is, I think it has something to do with liking the variety and diversity the different pieces offer me. I am usually working on one main, complex piece which will be challenging for me. It could be a complicated picture that requires a lot of intricate cutting and shaping, or it may be a new technique I am trying to master. I then have a ‘fun’ piece that I switch to when I want a bit of a rest and to ‘play’. Finally I will have something using a totally different technique e,g, glass-on-glass which means I am using a totally different medium. I could be working on all the pieces in a single session or I may just pop into the studio for 10 minutes while waiting for supper to cook.
This ‘scatter-gun’ approach works very well for me. Its not that I am procrastinating as friends will vouch, I am a very focused person and you usually have to drag me away from my mosaics. I think it is rather more the case that I love doing mosaics so much that even when I have spent a long time on a complicated piece, I still want to mosaic but just have a change of scene.
If I am working on a very large commission or I am up against a tight deadline, then I would probably work on that mosaic on a seperate work area, spending a dedicated amount of time each day on the piece. However, I would still sneakily turn my chair round to my main work bench in the evening for a little play about!
Although I know it is a very basic version of what Jane was trying to teach us, it has given me a good start and has enabled me to grasp the basics of cutting and shaping the glass. It seems to be a very, very messy process and no matter how neat you try to be, you get tiny shards of glass everywhere so I am forever tidying up after myself. The ‘rule’ of never going into my studio barefoot is even more relevant with glass bits hiding everywhere. I really enjoy making these glass pieces, I love the long ‘slashes’ of glass and the dramatic effect they create. I will now need to perfect cutting the smaller pieces and shapes to make up the pictures.
Rosanna's Mosaics and Glass 