Mosaic – The 52-Week Art Project 2026

Welcome to week 33 of The 52-Week Art Project! This week’s prompt is Mosaic. I’m sharing my mosaic inspired creations here today, but you have the whole week to work on yours. I created 4 different mosaic inspired pieces this week! Below, I’ll explain the techniques and supplies I used on each one. I hope these posts are informative and interesting and that maybe they will inspire you to have a go and get creative too!

The #CH52art Project Overview

• A creative project or those of us who can’t create daily, for whatever reason.
• There is 1 prompt per week to ​interpret in any way & take your time with.
• Use any medium (collage, clay, paint, photography, baking, knitting, lego, fabric, etc)
• You can skip a prompt anytime if needed, your wellbeing comes first. No stress here.
• You don’t need social media to participate, but if you share online, please use #CH52art
• Share your creations to the gallery on my blog (optional) & be inspired by other creatives.

Visit this page for more details.

I aim to post my creations at the start of the week, by Sunday evening or Monday morning. So I’m creating my pieces for each prompt one week in advance, maybe my interpretations can help or inspire others with theirs. That said, the gallery is always available, so you can browse or, if you’re participating, upload your creations, anytime.

This page contains affiliate links. This means that, if you make a purchase after clicking on one of my links, I will make a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Every bit helps. Thank you so much for your support!

Wk33 Prompt: Mosaic

I quite enjoyed this week’s prompt, as you can probably tell by the fact that I made 4 pieces. Most were simple designs though. Only one was pretty intricate. The simple repeating geometric shapes are so relaxing to paint though, so it was easy to do while reclined on the sofa.

Mosaic: Teal Triangles – Gouache

You would not believe how messy my pallette is again after cleaning it so well last week. But that is the way it goes when you’re creating. At least it is for me. It becomes a colourful mess and I love it!

So, since I had worked on warm tones last week, I started with cool tones this week. The pallette was covered in oranges and browns and needed some greens and blues!

I started by sketching triangles all over the page, the idea is to colour within the lines, leaving them untouched so they can be erased later. This leaves a white border around all the shapes. Think of them as the grout around mosaic tiles.

You could use thin washi tape to create the shapes, I’ve done that a lot in the past, but I wanted to try the more organically created, uneven lines this time. Giving the effect of tiling without the spacers, I guess. Another way to do this, if you’re painting with waterbased paint, is to use a white wax crayon to draw the shapes – the watercolours will resist the waxed areas.

Either way, some of the white lines will be thinner or thicker than others.

The aquabrush I used still had some shimmery gold watercolour paint in it. I don’t like wasting my paints, so I didn’t clean the brush I used last week for the gold accents, I just put the lid back on and it stayed clean and damp for next use. So some of these triangles are shimmering too.

This design is pretty straight forward. I just dipped my brush into various shades of greens and blues to get this mix of colours. Painted one or two triangles, dipped into a different colour, painted a couple more, and so on.

Since I wasn’t intentionally mixing specific shades there was the potential for each mix to end up differently. So I’d just try to not paint two adjacent triangles right after each other using the same paint mix.

Basically I painted one here, then moved to the other side of the page and painted another over there. That way the colours were spread out across the page and it still would look cohesive even if I was unable to get a perfectly matched shade again.

It helps if you’re using a limited pallette for your artwork, and mix your shades from those, then all the colours will be in the same family and tend to match, since they all contain a little bit of each other. In this case I have just 2 blues and 3 greens on my pallette which I was dipping into, without cleaning my brush between them.

Mosaic: Upside Down Sunset – Gouache

So this piece was a fail, but I’m posting it anyway, because there are parts of this one that I like. The process was interesting and I learned something from it, so here it is.

I started by sketching the shapes onto the page. I wanted some hills, a setting sun and some clouds in the sky.

Starting with the hills, I drew the outline first, then some contour lines within those shapes, making sure to create angular lines to mimic the undulations and curves of hills. The one on the left was the first one, and this was the first lesson, it turned out flatter than I was hoping for, more of a slope than rolling hills. It reminds me a bit of looking out of an aeroplane window, seeing the patchwork of farmland below.

The hills on the right came next, these were more angular and this really gave a better effect. You can imagine where there might be valleys and peaks on this side.

Again, the colouring is all wrong. The hill on the left should be more yellow as it’s facing the sun, the one up front should be in the shade and have more blue-toned greens. This whole painting is a lesson about knowing your light source and keeping it in mind the whole time. But I even painted the huge sun last, this is where I failed. The light source was not in mind until the very end.

I then painted the sky – upside down too! It makes total sense that the sky is more red/yellow where the sun is setting and then as you move further up/away, it should be purple/pink and then darker blues/indigo up top (night sky incoming).

There was a lot of readjusting of the lines, I don’t consider those adjustments mistakes, but a learning process. A lesson.

Mosaic: Pink Tiles – Gouache

So after that disappointment, I just wanted to do something simple. Something relaxing that didn’t require brain power. This lovely page was born.

I started by measuring and drawing 1cm squares. I used a ruler this time. But the idea is the same as the first painting with the triangles – paint within the lines, leaving white space around each shape.

To make life easier, I decided to use a square/flat brush for this one. I still had to make multiple strokes, in multiple directions, for each square, but this brush is way more predictable than trying to use a pointed round brush to paint tiny squares!

I settled on pink and periwinkle blue. I mixed my colours and then got painting. I did all the pink first and then all the blue, in a checkerboard pattern. I was even able to “watch” videos on the side while doing this one.

Mosaic: Tiny Tiles & Sea Glass – Pens & Markers

This piece has been a long time in the making. I was inspired to sketch out the design during the first week of this #CH52art Project. The first prompt was “a day at the seaside” and these tiny tiles and sea glass came to mind.

I’d slowly penciled in the design over time and then this week, for the “mosaic” prompt, I decided it was time to colour it. First, I had to erase a bit to lighten the pencil marks.

Starting with the sea glass, I used 3 different shades of turquoise, green and blue felt-tip markers. Making sure to space the various shades out in each composition.

Then I moved onto the Azulejo inspired tiles. Here I chose 3 colours too. The typical deep blue you will find on those tiles, with green and orange-red to complement all the cooler tones.

For the outlines of each tile design, I used ink pens. Then to colour them, I used felt-tip markers in slightly lighter shades than the pens.

The darker outlines give some depth and contrast which I like. I didn’t have an orange pen, so I used a red one for the orange parts, but I think it worked well.

Once all the tiny tiles were coloured, I went back in with the pens to add some little detail lines and shading on any petal or leafy designs and erased the pencil lines.

I then took a grey fineliner and outlined the Azulejo tiles. Just to define their edges a bit more because once I’d erased all the pencil lines, I felt like it needed that definition back.

There was a moment, when I started colouring the first Azulejo tile, that I thought I’d made a huge mistake with the colouring again. But I decided to trust the process, and after colouring a few more tiles, I really liked how it was turning out.

Now I love this piece. It’s so bright and joyful. And it really reminds me of summer holidays at the seaside or poolside.

Next Prompt, Wk34: Waves

I’m super excited for our next prompt! I think mine will be mixed media, ooh but then, I’m also about to receive a new batch of paints, so I might just be using those. Oh boy, so many options!

I cannot wait to see how everyone interprets this prompt!

Would You Like To Participate?

The #CH52art Summer Gallery 2026

Blog Parties & Link-ups where I’m sharing this post. Click here to see my link-up calendar and find new blogs to enjoy!