The Process of 50 Shades of Jelly Beans

Hello everyone. As always, thank you for your continued support of the Vive la Différence series. As I mentioned on Monday, I wanted to share the process of my vignette. I thought it might be of interest to some of you. A lot of work goes into making an art piece (whatever it may be) and just seeing the finished article (is something ever finished?) can often be unsatisfactory.

I chose the theme: 50 shades of jelly beans with objects: colours and flowers. Initially I wanted to make a 3D piece and photograph it. I went to buy the jelly beans and was thinking about a background. Here below you see the scanned image of the flowers I drew and painted.

Once I had my jelly beans (yes, I bought over 50 different colours) I needed to decide whether I will use them to make flower shapes or simply use them to fill in the background.

As mentioned in my latest Vive la Différence post, I just couldn’t cope with the smell of all these preservatives and E-colours, so abandoned the idea. I needed a Plan B. Good job I am proficient in my Photoshop skills. In order not to just get flat colours I drew around the various flowers of my scanned artwork. If you look at the very first image again, you will see how I was able to create the various jelly bean shapes out of the different colours and mark makings. So, now I had my 50 shades of jelly beans!

In order to emphasize the jelly beans I first tried to make the flowers and background monochrome. I experimented with different degrees of shades here.

My favourite of this monochrome series has to be this one here below. Can you see how the flowers would look great in either flocking or velvet? I can see this as wrapping paper!

Next I was trying to make the flowers look like white chalk and although the jelly beans still show up well I felt both flowers and jelly beans were fighting for too much attention.

Ah, colours…. they always make me feel right at home! This is definitely my comfort zone. You’ll see a whole lot of experiments here. I just couldn’t decide, always trying to make sure the jelly beans stand out somewhat.

Once I had decided upon the image I would show in my vignette (not show here) I was free to take another angle, forget about the 50 shades of jelly beans and play with the shapes and patterns to my heart’s content. I’m always looking to create interesting imagery. Here below I was playing with the shapes and contrasts to get a certain effect. The jelly beans now serve as shapes for creating background patterns that support the flower imagery.

I love this next one as it was getting closer to what I wanted to achieve. There was a real synergy between the flowers and the background. Not quite there, but nearly!

My absolute favourite is the image below, where the background and the jelly beans blend perfectly with the shapes of the flowers and you have to look closely to make out all the shapes. I also love the colour combination, which I know is a little in vogue at the moment. This was unintentional. It would also be fun to see this piece embroidered.

I hope to have demonstrated how you can start with a simple idea and create something unique. Without me talking you through the entire process, you wouldn’t know how this image came about. The last few images were not right for my VLD vignette as it wouldn’t have made much sense and so I’m happy to share them with you here in this post. Apologies for the amount of images. I did spent many hours on it and felt it told the whole story better than showing just a few.

I’m dying to know. Which one(s) speaks to you. Any favourite(s)?

I’m attending Blogtacular this weekend and hope to see some of you there. Happy weekend lovelies x