You might be wondering, “Just what is a mosaic?” The title of this chapter offers a clue. The term mosaic is used to describe artwork consisting of patterns or pictures created on a surface using stones, tiles, bricks, or even glass. You’ve probably seen an area above a kitchen sink that displays a pattern made up of small ceramic tiles glued to the wall. That is a mosaic.
Since the core of the LEGO system consists of small bricks and plates that you can easily use to form patterns or illustrations, LEGO is an ideal medium for creating mosaics.
LEGO elements offer you two different ways in which to create mosaics. The first style, known as studs-out, is formed by attaching smaller bricks or plates (often 1x1’s or 1x2’s) to a baseplate with their studs exposed, or “out,” where you can see them. Figure 8-1 shows a mosaic pattern created in this manner.
Figure 8-1. The elements that make up the main image are facing studs-out, whereas the border of this small mosaic is made up of standard tiles.
In Figure 8-1, you can see that the studs on each piece face out toward the viewer. Studs-out mosaics tend to be blocky in appearance but are fairly easy to plan and build. Later in this chapter, I’ll show you a couple simple ways to turn an image into a mosaic.
The second way to make a LEGO mosaic is to use something known as the studs-up approach. In this case (shown in Figure 8-2), the pattern is created by viewing the bricks and plates from the side so that their studs are all pointed up toward the top of the picture.
Figure 8-2. You can use studs-up mosaics alone to create interesting, stand-alone, artistic pieces, or as part of a larger model to add lettering or other images.
A more advanced version of this technique involves turning some of the plates (and sometimes tiles) by 90 degrees to allow for more subtle shapes. In this chapter, we’ll look at the basic technique but also create a more complicated pattern.