The Return of The Cave

Hi pixel fans, it's high time for another Cave of Pixels update, so here goes! What have I been up to then? Well, I arrived back in the UK last month, approximately 10 days before the London Gaming Market, where I was set to have a stall. Some frantic beading later, I was ready and set up!

It was another great market, organised by Replay Events, and I was pleased to shift two thirds of the artwork I took. I'm already looking forward to the next one in November!

Having designed a lot of portraits while I was away, I was keen to get started on them. I made a few of my favourite models:

As you can see, Charlotte was happy to receive hers in the post! If you want to find these ladies on Instagram, their usernames are @charlottesomething , @dani_divine and @shellydinferno . 

The rest of my work has been portraits, with a view to exhibiting in The Hubbub again. Here's what I've done so far, with more in the pipeline...

Enlarge the Ali one to see the level of detail involved, despite only using 7 colours. An eye for detail and plenty of patience is essential in this game!

Although it was the simplest design, the Hulk one was particularly time consuming because I realised about half way through that the shade of dark green I was using was too dark. ​The pic below shows the darker green in the top half, and the lighter shade in the bottom, which allowed the detail to show through better. It was a painstaking process, but I went back and replaced the darker beads.

I've also been fixing some older pieces I made, but never got round to presenting properly for one reason or another. For example, the Disney Princess Leia used to be mounted on a painted canvas that had been battered and dented in storage, so I decided to frame it instead. 

The Avengers portraits had just been sat around unframed for ages, so I decided to make some comics collage backgrounds for each character to mount them on. I hope you'll agree this has made them look pretty good!

Another cool thing going on right now is a little exhibition I have at The Star pub in Dorking, with a superheroes theme. The awesome team at Game Over Gaming have organised this for me. Here are some pics:

The bead train never stops! Stay tuned to my social media for daily updates on my pixel art! Find me at @caveofpixels on Twitter and Instagram.