Portrait Mosaic Progress - XXVIII

Okay, a bit of an exaggeration. I've only been working on this mosaic since April 1st, but I did have hopes of getting farther along on it over the weekend than I actually did... but you know - laundry, dishes, and the odd artist's workshop tend to eat up studio time. And it REALLY was my turn to do some of the housework. Abelisto often ends up doing far more than I in the care of the house.

Other than the amount of progress I am feeling pretty good about this mosaic. I like the way it's turning out (hint for looking at close-up photos of mosaics - squint your eyes up to the point where the lines between the tesserae are less obvious...)

I've started working on the hair. Since the hair is supposed to be nearly black I am using really dark blues, a dark mahogany brown, some random dark grays for the main flow of the hair, with slightly lighter versions of those colors as highlights.

You can see some lines that I've drawn in the process of thinking about the hair. After several tries at creating the outline for the hair I still was not satisfied with it. So instead of following some predetermined line - in which case I would have set the outer edge of the hair and worked inward toward the face - I've decided that when I work on the part where the hair is hanging downward, I would start right alongside the face and work my way down the mosaic in "locks" of hair. When it looks and feels right I'll stop. You can see the beginning of this on the right side of the face (left side as you are looking at the photo).

I haven't decided if I am going to show the ears or not. If I do I'll have to pull off a couple of the hair tesserae that I added last night.

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