Art Bead Scene November Challenge M.C. Escher

I love a good challenge!  Being as busy as I was with shows this year, I missed out on a lot of them.  So I am happy to have a little more free time to play, and create.  This month, Art Bead Scene's Artist Challenge is based on M.C. Escher.  He was one of my early favorite artists.  Not only that, but it happens to be one of my favorite works by him as well.

 

 

Here is what Art Bead Scene says about the challenge.

Three Worlds, 1955 by M C Escher

Lithograph

 

About the Art

Three worlds depicts a large pool or lake during the autumn or winter months, the title referring to the three visible perspectives in the picture: the surface of the water on which leaves float, the world above the surface, observable by the water's reflection of the forest, and the world below the surface, observable in the large fish swimming just below the water's surface.

About the Artist
Maurits Cornelis Escher, June 1898 – 27 March 1972, usually referred to as M. C. Escher, was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations.

Did I mention that grey tones are my favorite as well?  Anyhow, I was planning on doing some polymer the day I saw this, and thought about making a cab, with fish scales, in greys.  It took awhile, but I love how it turned out.  (had to cast a mold of that baby, didn't want to hand stick all those scales again!).

Then I prong set the cab, and to give it a coy like appearance, I added flowing wire fins on the side and tail.  Then I added a couple pearls for eyes.  I typically don't do "realistic" or try to make animals in my work, but this was stylized enough, that I really felt it still was still true to my aesthetic.  

To represent the tree's, I used a bronze cast of a drift wood branch that I'd been saving, along with some actually wood beads made from branches.

The rest was just beaded.  I pulled out my bins of grey and black beads, and got to work, just randomly combining shapes and colors so that they flowed around the necklace.  I also used two of Genea's lampwork discs in grey that have been waiting for just the right piece!!!!

The only thing I wanted to do, and didn't, was add an additional backing, to hide the wires for the fins (they run across the back horizontally), and add text to that backing, but I knew adding any more rivets to the front would take away from my Koi.  Other then that, I am very happy with my piece!  Hope you like it!

Any other good challenges going on out there I should know about???