Beaded Seascapes

Figure A--Doug Johnson's New England scenes look as if they are painted. Look closer, however, and you'll see beads--lots of them. There are more than 40,000 in this piece alone. The beads are woven on a loom in an under-and-over fashion.

Figure B--Johnson spends most of his time in his "bead bunker," which is a small room in his basement apartment. He work is so detailed that he often employs 60 to 70 shades of one color of bead to create one object. Using a variety of blue shades, for instance, gives him the ability to color a sky from dark to light in the same art piece.

Figure C--This work of the Manhattan skyline took 250,000 beads to complete and has inspired Johnson to attempt to create the skylines of other great cities like London and Moscow.