Gift #1088: April Art Bead Scene Challenge

Since we’ve wrapped up April, I thought now would be a good time to share the art bead scene challenge, especially before May takes off like a rocketship!  The weeks seem to fly by so fast!  April’s painting was of the hot, steamy desert and was a visual feast of color

Meet “Landscape with Peacocks” by Paul Gauguin.  While I’m certainly not an expert in the art of impressionism, I recognized this right away as being a Gauguin because an art museum in Cincinnati had just featured some of his Tahitian works in their quarterly publication – including this very one!  When I see it I’m overwhelmed by the riot of color.  From deep moody teals and blues to bright fiery red and orange – this painting has it all and the colors seamlessly bleed and flow into each other.  It’s quite mesmerizing.  The initial blog post on Art Bead Scene said that Gauguin made his artwork unique in using heavy outlines to delineate aspects of focus in his work.  I’m not sure if that’s very clear in this painting, but I think it shows his expert use of color to use deep tones to accentuate the lighter swathes of color and bring attention to the focal images.  My favorite bit is the top left with the multi-hued greens that remind me of rainforests.

I have quite a collection from my favorite bead artist, Humblebeads, and found several of her pieces that mirrored the colors in this painting.  In the end, I chose to go with a long bead, which is covered in deep green vines and bright orange florals and reminded me of a tropical jungle.  I strung the pendant with a variety of semiprecious stones which I had acquired on sale at the bead show this spring.  To give some weight and balance to the long bead, I added an orange-enameled leaf from Gardanne beads, a tiny bird, and a few tiny dark green agate rounds.  These are all nods to the foliage and subject matter in the painting.

I have a fondness for pairing up my beads with yarn and this gorgeous skein picked up the colors perfectly.  So here’s a more whimsical look at the necklace.  The yarn is called Tannenbaum.  Perfect name!

The earrings took a while to put together.  I knew I wanted to use more of the orange enameled leaves, but I didn’t know what to put with them to dress them up.  Then, Humblebeads posted one of her Bead Table Wednesday editions and it was on making beaded fringe on copper wire and hammering the ends.  I thought this was a great answer to how I could add some color with more beads without distracting from the leaf.  So I gave it a whirl and stacked green agate rounds with copper spaces on wire, hammered the ends, and voila – lovely dangles that could float behind the leaf and give a punch of color.  I’m very pleased with how they turned out.

The weather has yet to turn hot and steamy here, but I know it will all too soon.  And when it does, I’ll be ready with a tropical forest-inspired jewelry set.  Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Blessings to you,

Sarah