Luke - mouth woes

Here's Luke in his current manifestation. It's amazing how small his face is compared to all the hair which is yet to come.

Whenever I start writing for the blog about Luke, I end up writing about something different than what I originally intended. Usually in preparing the photos I see something I did not see before. This is dangerous, because I will most likely lead to ripping out pieces of tesserae.

I mentioned before that with the portraits I've done in the past, the mouth has always been the most difficult section to do. I'm always amazed at how much of ones personality is conveyed through the mouth. Get it wrong and the portrait hardly looks like the original subject.

Luke was supposed to be different. The area above and below his mouth is covered with facial hair, making the andamento a lot easier. His mouth was small and really not a prominent part of his face.

Luke was created on a much larger scale than the reproduction that I'm doing. He was also meant to be viewed from a distance. So in following the original layout of the tesserae (left), it's difficult to see how the mouth is actually derived from the individuals lines of tesserae. My version is on the right. You really need to stand back and view the mosaic from a distance to see the mouth.

When I looked at the mosaic from a distance, the left side of his upper lip (your right) seemed a bit too big (left photo), so I removed the farthest piece and replaced it with a piece that's the color of his facial hair (right photo).

But in looking at the original, it's difficult to tell whether those pieces were intended as part of the lip or a lighter facial hair. In a reduced version of the original, it's still hard to say where the top lip ends and the facial hair begins - but it does look like the top lip is larger than his lower lip - almost a bit too large.

I think my first placement was closer to the original than the change that I made; however, the two pieces on the left side (your right) of his upper lip should have been a darker color. I'll give that a try and see how it turns out.

One problem with working in the direct technique - which is made even worse by working on a piece a little at a time - is that the glue sets, and it's very difficult to pry out pieces which were laid down days ago. Furthermore, it's always difficult to replace torn-out pieces with ones that fit perfectly. A simple replacement of one or two pieces might take an hour to do.