These "beads" are such a blast from the past and I loved creating simple, bold and colour patterns and shapes using these as a kid.
What are they?
Completely shocked that not everyone knows what these things are - but happy to educate! :)
Hama bead or "Perler" beads (USA) are tiny colourful plastic beads which vary in size, opacity, finish and texture. The idea is you think of a design and then recreate this design on a pin board using these beads. Once the design is complete, you then iron over the beads, melting them together and securing the overall design. When the beads are cool enough, you can peel them away from the pin board and voila.
I am really interested in new and fun ways to create artwork and this has to be one of them. The process is long and tedious, you need pin tweezers and a steady hand on top of hours and hours of patience and days of standing on the bloody things - but i think this process has the potential to be fun and help create a different kind of visual response.
On the hunt for inspiration, tutorials and techniques.....so of course i made a pinterest board!
It really helps me to organise and categorise everything that interests me - makes it easy to refer back too and also makes for a lovely reading list/browse
These boards have also helped in other ways. Hama (Perler) bead art isn't exactly well known or a common process and is usually associated with children's activities. It took some digging but these images are a collection of more conceptual / refined artwork in which - if i experiment with this process for OUIL505 - i hope my results to be.
Bead stock website: http://www.hamabeads.com/
Notes:
Varying sizes of bead to be used in designs for different applications:
• Large beads (maxi beads) for larger, bolder, more pixelated artwork/designs.
- Murals?
- Graffiti?
- Hama Bead Graffiti?
• Medium sized beads (midi beads) are most commonly used and have the largest variety of colours/finishes
- Better for use with designs/artworks with many varying tones/shades of colour
- realistic artwork?
- 3D artwork?
• Small beads (mini beads) are tiny and come in less colours than the medium size
- Good for use in more complex, higher in detail designs
- Don't use for large scale concepts - would take forever!
Can only use iron process to secure bead design if all beads in the design are the same size. Different sizes would cause different raised beads to receive heat from the iron, but not fuse to the beads of a smaller height below.
My own experimentation and artwork:
Secret 7 3D psychedelic album artwork:
