Chrismons

I've been working away steadily at Chrismons in various media, but this week I stumbled on one that's absorbed me entirely:  a fish that started out in cartoon form with beaded outlines but ended up in solid beads.  The iridescent colors on the scales were too pretty to stop until I'd filled the space.  Now I see fields of beads before my eyes waking and sleeping like the ring of Sauron.  It's a bit like working on a mosaic, I suspect. I may have to try that, always meant to.






I'm going to do another one, a rainbow trout this time.

8 comments:

Grim said...

It must take tremendous skill, and patience, to bring about such a thing.

Texan99 said...

Nah, honestly, just a touch of OCD. It took only a few days, and not that much skill. You just keep putting the beads on a thread two or three at a time and sewing them on. For the darker rows, I mixed up 4-5 fishy colors and picked them up randomly with the needle point. I did the same with a light mix for the stomach rows. In between, I used 3 darks and a light, then 2 and 2, and so on.

If it were meant to be inspected up close, I would need to work on making the stitches and spacing neater, but it will be fine for something intended to be viewed from 5-10 feet away.

E Hines said...

Like on a gallery wall? That's some pretty cool art.

Eric Hines

jaed said...

Gorgeous. The skill, I think, is more in selecting the beads, and figuring out how to pattern them to get the effects, than the actual construction—although that does take patience and care.

Margaret Ball said...

Beautiful beadwork. Take credit for your skill; the use of color in this piece is subtle but not trivial.

raven said...

Nice work! It looks like a Grayling?

Texan99 said...

It started life as an abstract cartoon, and I filled in the colors according to a general impression that fish are silvery on top and white on the bottom. The rainbrow trout I'm working on now is an attempt at something more like realism.

raven said...

A subject ideally suited to beadwork! Check out images of Eastern Brook trout and Arctic Char also- the trout family have gorgeous coloring!