With a little help from my friend

I couldn't resist the title even if George Harrison neither wrote nor sang the song, yes, and there is an s missing, but Gundel stayed out of this one completely while der Dekan was eager to help.

Are we playing again?

Although I had planned more WIP posts of my Lego Art set, I finished it more quickly than expected.
Please meet the colorful George Harrison!
It is a cool piece of pixel art, but it wasn't as much fun as a regular Lego project. In fact, in the end it felt more like a chore that had to get finished so I could take it off a to do list.
As I mentioned in replies to comments on the original post, it could be fun to try and make a design of my own, but 1. I don't feel like ripping all the studs out despite the included brick separator (which I wish I had had as a kid), 2. designing it would be the fun, the actual bricking might feel like a chore as well, 3. I still have a pattern for another fan wall portrait waiting to be bead loomed which is a lot more fun (if I could only muster the courage to finally try out the muffin tray solution, but I put it at the top on my Christmas vacation list now).
There are studs left over, though, so maybe I can get myself a plate and try out something small on it.

I left the picture small because
it brings out the pixel art better.
Click on the picture for more detail.

George Harrison didn't end up on my wall, it would feel weird to have just him up there and also I don't want to give up wall space for this. He's on a shelf behind my big Steiff Leo now and the box - real Lego collectors may want to skip the end of this sentence - will go into the recycling after der Dekan is done with it.
I always invited him to brick with me, but a few of the sessions ended without him. He was quite good at the beginning, but mid-session he lost all patience with me not being faster and not letting him play with the contents of the box.
Some of the baggies were hidden under cardboard with an opening, for example, so you could see something was in there.
As much as I didn't want the brat to get in there and maybe escape with an open plastic bag, I couldn't be mad at him for following his natural instinct of investigating the "mousehole". My attempt at distracting him with head kisses was only partially successful because he started kneading while sitting on the box and ended up in the opening with one foot which immediately reminded him of his mission again.

There were other temptations as well, though.
I took photos during just one of our bricking sessions and thought I'd share them with you.
Der Dekan was purring the whole time, by the way, don't let his look deceive you.
It made me laugh and tell him how much I love him, but also yell "stop" and "no" and "you little devil" a lot. A video would have been great fun for you to watch, no doubt, but I would have needed a lot more arms for that!
And if you need to know, he did actually get "thrown out" after that last picture because he went for my desk then which I'm afraid to say has a few unstable piles on it at the moment and of course those are the ones der Dekan choses for his shenanigans. It's my own fault, I know, but I have to say that he has been obsessed with my desk since he was a kitten and even then was always on the lookout for stuff to knock over or down - including my laptop - although it was really organized at that time. Since then he has been using my desk for pressuring me into getting what he wants - playing, food, snacks, mere attention - or simply for letting me know he's miffed with me.

Is this thing edible?

I have to take a closer look.

What do you mean, don't destroy the instructions before you're done?
I'm good, I'm good, gee, Mom!

Maybe just a little claw action ...

You never let me have ANY fun!

Exhibit A to prove der Dekan never gets to have any fun.

You know what? You can do this thing alone if you wanna be like that, Mom.

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.

So it begins ... Lego Art WIP

Ten days ago, I told you about my Lego "collection" whose pieces so far all have been gifts (so far because I found out about a minor, but really dumb mistake which required immediate retail therapy, so I bought Lego for myself for the first time). 

In that post, I mentioned my Lego Art set of "The Beatles" and how I've had it around for a few years because I couldn't even decide which Beatle to make. Well, on the day the post went live, I chose George because I just liked his picture best.

What even is Lego Art?
According to Wikipedia which has a load of quotes for articles on the topic, the theme was introduced in 2020 (which I think was also the year my friend gave me my set in order to make self-isolating easier, but being used to working on Lego projects together with him, I didn't see the appeal at the time).
The product line started with four mosaics, one of them "The Beatles", and didn't use 3D bricks, but 2D 1x1 studs. Later items also featured bigger tiles.

The sets depict iconic personalities or art, for example Warhol's Marilyn Monroe or Hokusai's The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.
During our Crafternoon - a Zoom meeting of bloggers coming together to chat and craft - I started working on the first square.
There are nine squares and fifteen different colors of studs and also tiles for the "frame".
The squares get attached to each other to form the whole picture.

Now I had to make another decision about how to work on the squares. Should I do one color after the other which means I would have to concentrate on counting or should I lay out all the colors I need for a square and do it spot by spot either horizontally or vertically?

As most of the first square was just black and dark grey, I went for the counting. I did the grey first, then filled up the gaps with black and did the few colors in the end.
I don't know yet if that will be a good idea once there are more colors on a square. If I had enough empty bead cups, I could set them all up like beads for beading or bead looming. Or I could use a bead tray if I had one, but that's not how I bead. We'll see.

Usually, when I started something like this, I kept going until I had finished. My pal and I spent hours chatting, laughing, and bricking, but these days I simply can't sit for that long anymore.
Ponder and later Gundel loved to help out.

Just checking if you left some of the bricks in
the shipping box.

Let me sort this out for you, Mom,
before I lose any interest at all forever.

During Crafternoon, I found out that der Dekan does NOT make a good Lego helper. The studs were too tempting and I'm too old to crawl around on the floor and look for little colored dots everywhere. Not only did he go for the ones I had taken out of the bags - very few at a time because I had expected that - but he also tried to rip out the studs on the plate, both with claws and teeth!
Possibly it would have helped to have my pal around because der Dekan is strictly a family guy meaning he usually retreats to the top of the wardrobe if non-family comes around.
My goal was to make one square a day, at least on the weekend. Yeah, that didn't happen. I finished the first one during Crafternoon on a Saturday and the next one on the Thursday after that.

Well, and now it's Tuesday and this is as far as I have come until Sunday afternoon (of course I'll have to take the one square off again because I have to finish the whole row so I can attach it).
And der Dekan helped after all. We found a way. The next time we didn't. Then we did again, but in the end he fell off the table because he had rolled around in the open lid of the box too wildly. We'll keep working on it.

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.