Cape Creek Bridge
Cape Creek Bridge - Florence, OR
bead weaving
5.5 x 9 in.
2023
These past few months I’ve been experimenting with different styles and ways to visually portray through bead weaving, and one design I ended up really liking was this sort of more realistic approach. I’ve experimented a bit with recreating images through weavings in the past, and have learned a lot from what I can and cannot do when it comes to limits in color and detail; so hopefully this piece shows a little bit of progression in that area.
When it came to an image that I wanted to depict that would also translate well into a bead weaving, I needed to mainly find something with a lot of vertical or horizontal direction to the image, and something with distinct contrast and colors that visually separated the foreground and the background. This image lent itself well to both aspects and I think came out pretty clearly in the end result.
For these more realistic depictions, I end up actually using a cross stitching app that translates any image you want into an appropriate size pixelated template as well as your choice of amount of colors you would like to use. So this software really helps with the main bulk of recreating the image into something that is workable and visually similar through the medium of beadwork, and helps save some time in that first design process step of the whole process.
When it came to weaving, finding the exact colors you want and need to accurately portray the image is always somewhat difficult, so some compromises need to take place to actually be able to complete the project. Some compromises on this particular weaving were the color of the ground ended up being more yellow than green, which was find because it contrasted nicely with the blue sky; and various colors of dark greens used for highlights and shadows in the foresty background had to be muted down into a more faint dark mass of foliage instead.
Overall though, I still really like how the end result turned out and how it still seems to have kept its image clarity and recognition at the end. Though these more realistic weavings take a much longer time to create because of its larger color palettes and much more intricate templates to follow when weaving, I think it is still important to include more designs like this in the future when it comes to my plans with the other various bead designs I have drawn out because of its visual and crafted uniqueness.
