Estimated time to read - around 3 minutes

This year I started a new mosaic membership, where the main premise is that each month I provide a prompt to help people get creative with their mosaic making.

The idea of providing prompts is not a new concept. A quick google search will bring up lots of sites with art prompts - ideas to motivate and inspire.

So why exactly are they helpful? As someone who has both used prompts in my own practice as well as created prompts for students, here are a few of my thoughts.

Today I wanted to take time to recognise that when it comes to mosaics, we should take some time to shift our focus from the end product to what’s going on during the making part.

Estimated time to read - under 3 minutes

I have recently finished teaching a mosaic course, where we do not make any mosaics for the first two sessions. Instead we take time to plan things out, experiment and play with different ideas.

These early stages of making a mosaic, the ones where you develop your ideas and try things out, are really important. Because a finished piece of work does not appear from nowhere. Time needs to be spent thinking, researching, experimenting and planning before the first tessera gets anywhere near being stuck down.