Scribbles and Dots
A simple idea to share today–the use of liquid polymer as a textural medium applied with a free-form drawing approach. A nice, thick liquid polymer such as Fimo Deco Gel or Sculpey’s Bake and Bond will stay raised so that you can draw lines, squiggles, dots or whatever you desire onto the surface of your clay or the surface of anything you can then bake.
I remember seeing these pieces by Libby Mills some years ago but never got around to playing with the idea … but for some reason I’m thoroughly enamored of the idea this week and have been scribbling away.
You can see that Libby often colors her liquid polymer or burnishes it later on. Alcohol inks, oil paints and mica powders can be used to color your scribble medium.
My experiments with other liquid polymers lead me to discover you can actually scribble with them if you take a couple extra steps. I found that adding an abundance of powdered colorant such as pastels, iron oxides or mica powders can get thinner, self-leveling liquid polymers to stand up quite a bit … but only for a little while. They will eventually spread. However, if you use a baked piece of polymer and warm the clay first, the lpc will set on the clay at you scribble. I use my trusty hot plate/mug warmer to heat up the cured clay then, leaving the piece on the warmer, I can draw away. It even works on perpendicular surfaces. You can also warm the cured clay in the oven and then draw on it but you’ll need to work quickly before it cools down too much.
So what do you think? Time to put your scribbling skills to work?
I love this! This sounds like a dumb question, but what type of tool do you use for this technique?
My guess is she used a small squeeze bottle as in my experiments those made the best dots. I fell to using my rubber tipped Colour Shapers most of the time but you could also use a well saturated brush.