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.”
 |
| Harry Potter |
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.
 |
| Marilyn Monroe |
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.
 |
| Cummings: William and Kate's Portrait |
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.
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