Ok, this was difficult! Hello beautiful Hive family and hello lovers of art. Today I'll be sharing a stunning but equally tasking portrait I made for a very special purpose.
What made this so tasking?
First of all...beads, tonnes of beads! Making a single bead realistic means you have to get the effect of light and shadow right, now imagine repeating that a hundred times. Secondly it was the purpose of making the portrait. This admirably romantic guy wanted to present it just before proposing marriage to his fiance whom I must admit is stunningly beautiful. Everything had to be right so he put a lot of pressure on me, almost making feel like I hadn't made a portrait before. Finally it was the fact that the reference photo wasn't all that great, so much detail was lost so I needed to do some improvisation and make some assumptions from experience.
It took the better part of my regular working hours for a whole day to make the sketch to begin with. Putting everything in the right place initially was surely going to help while shading so I took my time.
I went on to shade the hair and head beads, the latter much more challenging of course. This took another entire working day. Each tiny little bead had to be singled out and rendered correctly to make the whole thing work. The shadows had to be in sync and work together too
One of the sweetest and easiest parts was the forehead region, I love working with brushes whoof!
I went through the face faster than you can say jack, started out on one hand and the neck beads all through a day and half or so. I was happy I could capture the make up on the face so we'll I must say. I mean lashes, cheek bone, lips and all, I may just be a good make up artist if I cared to try. The next beads were somewhat easier to do because they were much larger giving me more space to express each one to the fullest. At this point I had beaten all the pressure and started enjoying the process as I normally do.
On and on I went interchanging between beads and skin for about another day and half to complete the portrait. Notice I went from top to bottom, left to right through this drawing. I'm right handed and this method helps avoid smudging a lot, a good too that has really helped my drawings come out cleaner!
Finally I got it framed this time with a purple brownish frame other than my regular black. The portrait has a lot of blacks so I wanted that nice contrast.
In summary It took just over 5 days to complete this. It was done with charcoals and a bit of graphite for finesse on 25x20 alabaster paper
Of course he really loved it and I heard she went wild when she saw it too. Talk about being part of a love story 😉. I'm sure it's hanging on her walls somewhere keeping her smiling everyday!
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