I decided to enter an art bead challenge by Art Bead Scene. I was looking for new ways to show off my creations, new inspirations, and design challenges. I wanted to do something I hadn't done before, try out new techniques and I needed motivation to create pieces that were in my head but I couldn't find an application for them.
The inspiration provided for this challenge is this painting by Egon Schiele, titled, Field of Flowers.
I elected to do a polymer clay pendant bead, in a unique shape I had never tried before, smothered in flowers, some based on real flowers, others my own designs. My main colors would be orange, yellow, and red and I decided that a black background would be optimal to set off the brightly colored blooms. I used microbeads for the centers of the flowers. One flower I had been wanting to create for a while, a bird of paradise, with it's orange and green blossoms seemed to fit perfectly as the focal flower for my pendant. Since last fall, when I was helping my mom come up with ideas for an art project, I have been enamored with Man Ray's painting The Misunderstood, particularly the little eye on his bird of paradise blossom. It just looks at you. So I placed my little bird of paradise peaking out from among a diverse array of bright blooms, and Bird's Eye View seemed a fitting title.
The little eye is a tiny detail and I didn't think it was especially noticeable. However, my little two year old brother spotted it, decided it was a bird and promptly dubbed it a "cuckoo clock".
I had scraps of colors I had mixed left over from making the flowers and leaves, so I rolled them together to make beads with. Some of the colors mixed almost instantly forming a lovely brown, but some of the colors made the tiny streaks of red, green, orange and yellow throughout the clay like I wanted. Faux leather cord seemed like the perfect paring for the large loops on my pendant and my best friend helped me decide on red. I made the 4 beads large holed so the cord would fit through them easily.
