Labor of Love

Wow it's a good thing I didn't make a New Year's resolution to post more often to my blog. (insert smiley face)  It's amazing how fast time flies when you're having fun.  Today I'm going to talk about my latest project, it is a portrait of my son Kevin.  I started working on this way back in December and just now finally finished it and it's up on the wall.  The finished portrait is 3' x 4' tall.  I guess I made upwards of 100 different canes that went into this project.  The hardest part of this project was determining how many canes that I needed to make.

They're all black and white and shades of gray. Hmm. ....50 shades of gray ....at times it was torturous ...but I also liked it....hmmm maybe there's a book here.

I created this project by first creating 12 in. Sq blocks of scrap clay that I created a bubbly surface on.  I then applied thin slices of my canes to match a photograph that was taken by my sister-in-law when Kevin was just a little tyke.  It is my favorite photograph that I have of him.

 If I'm ever to do another project or mosaic like this again I think I will prebake my squares rather than trying to put them on raw.  It was hard getting the 12 in.² blocks to match up as nicely as I would like them too.
Here are pictures I took along the way. There's also a final picture of Kevin standing near his portrait.