"Turkish Tiles" process

Sometimes you just have to take a chance.

I had great expectations for this Opus tile, but I just didn't like it once it was finished.
But darn it all! I'd put a lot of time and work into it! No way I was going to just throw it out, and I already have too many ATCs to trade. Surely I could do something with it.

I'd had the idea of Turkish and Iranian mosques, with their columns and stripes and geometric patterns, but the parts hadn't come together as I had hoped. I realized that I needed a different vision for it, and decided that maybe it needed to become less cluttered by mixing it up a bit more.

I trimmed a quarter inch off all sides, leaving me with a 10" square, easily divided into 25 two inch squares. Here are all the "twinchies":

I painted a 12" canvas white and then decided how I would arrange the little squares. There were a few with doorways and I decided to place those along the bottom. The sides of the canvas were then painted mottled turquoise and blues, which turned out really nicely.

"Turkish Tiles" (c) 2016 Margaret Bremner
12" square; pen-and-ink, colored pencil, acrylic paint

I didn't like the tiny difference of level between the canvas and the paper, and I thought it should be glossy because of the "tiles" idea. I used a self-levelling epoxy varnish and it now looks as if there's a sheet of glass on top! I painted gloss varnish on the sides to tie them in with the glossy surface.