Every year, my students do a collaborative project which I call a Digital Mosaic. I choose a theme; past themes have included architecture, art masterpieces, birds, food, and even eyeballs. I find photographs that fit the theme, and crop them to 8"x10". Each photograph is cut up into twenty 2"x2" squares. Students choose a square and, using either Photoshop or Illustrator, create a digital 4"x4" rendering of what they see in their square. The design challenges are to duplicate the colors as accurately as possible, and to maintain accurate proportion. Because the students are using a paper square as a reference, there is no tracing. It is amazing how well the squares line up. I love to see the different ways students approached drawing what they see. For instance, look at the various treatments of the chicken's feathers! The result is a 16"x20" poster that gets displayed in the annual art show.