March Monthly Challenge

Title: Red Water Lily of Southern India

By: Marianne North
Date: 1878
Medium: Watercolor

What is the Monthly Challenge?

Every month we challenge our readers to create jewelry inspired by the featured artwork. You have until the end of the month to share your work and then we pick two winners to receive beads and jewelry-making supplies from our sponsors. Our only rule? You must use at least one art bead in your piece!

About the Art & Artist:

Marianne North was an English Victorian biologist and botanical painter who spent her life traveling the world, studying plants and accurately painting them.

Marianne was 40 when she set off alone to travel the world and paint. She traveled for 24 years painting over 6 continents and 17 countries! Using her family’s political connections and wealth, Marianne was able to create an adventurous life that few dared to dream.

Our challenge painting comes from Marianne’s trip to India. She produced 200 paintings during her 15 months in India. Without formal training her work blurred the lines between art and scientific studies. She didn’t follow the traditions of botanical painting and infused her joy for her subject matter. Marianne sketched quickly in pen and ink on paper and then painted her work in a bright palette of oil paints. She created many of her paintings in the field, directly observing her subject matter.

She created over 1000 paintings in her lifetime. A true pioneer who forged a career that caught the attention of Britain and the respect of her peers, such as Charles Darwin. Her work was of remarkable importance to the botany community in a time before color photography. She not only painted flowers, she discovere unknown species.

In her later years she created a gallery of her work at the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens and now the gallery houses 833 piece os her work, covering almost every surface in the gallery.

You can watch a video of her life and work produced by the Kew Gardens here. I highly recommend watching it to learn more about this incredible artist!

To read more about the artist and see her work, visit here.

 

New Submission Policies!
Create Your Account:

Take a minute to create your account on the site right here. I recommend using your full name or business name as your username.

After you create your account, add your profile photo and bio.

(If you have a long-lost WordPress account you may need to reset your password.)

Entering the Monthly Challenge:

When you are ready to add your monthly entry go the submit page. You’ll need to login before you can submit your photo. You can submit photos from your computer or mobile device.

Remember to add your blog or shop link and art bead details to the description.

You can upload two photos for each monthly challenge category (jewelry or beads).

Add your photo to the gallery for the current month.

___________________________________________________________________

How to Enter the Monthly Jewelry Challenge:

Create something using an art bead that fits within our monthly theme. We post the art to be used as your inspiration to create. This challenge is open to jewelry-makers, fiber artists, collage artist, etc. The art bead can be created by you or someone else. The challenge is to inspire those who use art beads and to see all the different ways art beads can be incorporated into your handiwork.An Art Bead must be used in your piece to qualify for the monthly challenge. Upload your photo to our new photo gallery. Include a short description, who created the art beads and a link to your blog or shop, if you have one. Deadline is February 28th.
You may upload two entries per month.

***Beads strung on a chain, by themselves and beads simply added to wire or cord will not be accepted.***

Entries for Bead Artists
Art beads must be created by you and fit the Art Bead Scene’s monthly challenge theme. They can be made for the challenge or ones you have made before. Two entries per month are allowed.
One entry will be picked by the editors each month for a free month of advertising on the Art Bead Scene. Bead entries have to be uploaded to the photo gallery by the 30th of the month. See above to create an account.

Monthly Challenge Winners

• Two prize winner will be selected at random from all pictures posted in our new gallery!
• Winners will be randomly chosen from all the qualifying entries on January 1st.
Perfect Pairings: Designer + Art Bead Artist

• Perfect Pairings focus on both the jewelry designer and the art bead artist.
• Be sure to point out all the art bead artists in your work in the description of the photos when you upload to the new gallery. Links to their website or shop are appreciated. That way we can all find new art beads to love!
• From all the entries during the month, an editor will pick their favorite design to be featured on Friday here on the ABS, so get those entries in soon.

What is an Art Bead?

An art bead is a bead, charm, button or finding made by an independent artist. Art beads are the vision and handiwork of an individual artist. You can read more about art beads
.***A bead that is handmade is not necessarily an art bead. Hill Tribe Silver, Kazuri ceramic beads or lampwork beads made in factories are examples of handmade beads that are not considered art beads.

Beaded beads, stamped metal pendants or wire-wrapped components are not considered art beads for our challenge.***

Join us Tomorrow to see our prizes and sponsors for March!