Portrait

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.

Because of the huge size of the model, i struggled to evenly melt the beads. Too much heat, and the beads would form a vacuum with the pegboard and become impossible to remove without damaging the portrait. Too little heat, and the beads would not fuse.

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.