We were fortunate enough to be asked to create this tile mural for the Neptunian Womans Club of Manhattan Beach. It was intended to raise their visibility in the community as well as exemplify their long years of service to Manhattan Beach’s history and legacy.
Each single tile is 12″ square, making the entire piece 10ft x 19ft. We documented each step in our process, and you can read all about it!
Here’s is Dawn’s study for the piece, partially done:
The sketch shows us that we need 190 tiles and each one has to be sanded down and squared up to keep to size, including an 1/8th inch grout line. Here’s the jig we devised to make sets of raw tiles uniform. Each groups of tiles were sanded down by hand until they were square.
Next comes the board to paint it on. Universal Engravers was kind enough to loan us a portion of his shop to complete the project, as well as help us build the structure on which the tiles will rest. Even with this extra space, we didn’t have enough room to work on the entire piece at once. We could only keep 12′ on the board at any time.
Each tile rested on a thin plexiglass shelf that was imbedded in the board.
Once it was ready, we set to filling the board with tiles. The empty spaces are where the tile will have to be individually shaped in order to fit the space.
Dawn preps and cleans each tile.
Then the tiles gets numbered, so that the laying-in of the drawing is easier.
The drawing is done in pencil, taking care to not crack or break any tiles in the process.
Once the left side is drawn in, it’s time to paint!
Dawn uses a technique which relies heavily on layering of paint. Plus, ceramics colors sometime end up looking nothing like they do in their final firing. So she’s got ALOT to think about.
Here she is working on the corner pieces.
And here’s the top corner finished!
Here’s the first round of tiles out of the kiln. You can see the variations in color and tone in each tile, giving it a mosaic feel.
Work continues on the mermaid. Each of these tile is 1foot square, so that makes her just about life sized!
Since we only have 11feet of space to work, we move the mural over and get started on the right side of the piece.
A few weeks later, we’ve finished the right side and ALL the tiles have been fired and glazed. We took the entire set to a local park to finally see it all laid out
There you go! You can see a few tiles marked with blue tape that will need a little extra care or need to be replaced.
Then we pack it back up (leaving out the tiles which need extra work) and wait to deliver it to the contractor that will install it!
That’s it for now, check back soon to see it installed!
