It was to be the most intense Hama Bead model i would make.
3249 beads, over 10 hours.
I started by taking a picture of a friend, then reducing the resolution and the colours to greyscale.
The first problem i had was that there were too many shades of grey. Between white and black, there were only 3 shades of grey provided by the Hama beads, far too few to have much detail in the portrait.
Early attempts thus didn't work out too well.
So i added in a second colour scale. Black and white were still the extremes, but in between i had everything from dark brown to beige, totaling 7 shades. Once the gradient was decided on, i could finally start working on the model itself.
Because i was using mini beads, i had to use tweezers to move every single one of the 3249 beads onto the pegboard. 10 tedious hours later, i was ready to iron the model into its final permanent form.
Then disaster struck.
While the centre of the model melted pretty quickly, the edges did not, resulting in a potential disaster when i tried to remove the ironing paper.
An hour of reconstructive surgery later, i was prepared to reforge the shards of Hama.
This time, to my great relief, it was successful.
A close up of the melted masterpiece. She even has pores!
Now the only thing i didn't consider in the making of this portrait was the awkwardness of giving someone an artwork of their own face. Where exactly was she supposed to display this anyway?
But i guess it's still better than giving her a portrait of my face.
