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Sweet Stars: Celebrity Portraits Made from Just Jelly Beans!
Other | Monday 21st May 2012 | Annalisa
Jelly Bean portraits have taken the world by a sweet storm! The pieces, which include portraits of the likes of George Clooney, The Queen and Harry Potter, are rumoured to use more than 10,000 of the tiny sweets.
The brightly coloured sweets are treated as gems by the UK’s only accredited Jelly Belly artist in the UK, Malcolm West. The 52-year-old Surrey sweet-tooth said, “The process is the same for all the pictures. I develop s rough image and…create a tight colour composition which becomes my guide for the mosaic.”
He explained the average creation process takes about six weeks of patience, a careful hand and silence for concentration. West has even made a royal wedding portrait of Prince William and Kate Middleton, which used 111,000 beans!
Jelly Bean art was dreamed-up by San Francisco-born artist Peter Rocha. Rocha is the self-proclaimed king of Jelly Belly art since he started the craze way back in 1982. He even managed to impress President Reagan with his work after the United States’ 40th President publically grinned about his fondness for the sweets.
Rocha was delighted by the range of colours and flavours and noticed he could turn the beans into art. His first piece took over six months to become a reality. When he retired in 2000, Peter’s nephew Roger Rocha took his place, creating portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth in 2002.
Roger also fashioned a portrait of George Clooney, which is now on display at the Luxe Hotel in Beverly Hills. When it is sold, the money raised will be donated to a charity of Clooney’s choosing.
Kristen Cummings used 12,000 jelly beans for her work, but the 29-year-old expressed a difficulty with resisting the temptation to eat the sweets as she goes along. It takes Cummings about 100 hours to create a portrait, and she uses the very same process as Rocha.
As repetitive as the construction can be for the jelly bean artists, the new art form has taken the internet by storm. And who knows, maybe in time, Madame Tussaud’s will throw their celebrity waxworks away, and with be choc-a-block with jelly bean portraits.
Making The Portraits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgRhvuUvz5U&feature=player_embedded
Marianne Calnan
