Where Spring and Summer Collide
July 22, 2015 Inspirational Art
One of the striking things about summer is that point where some of the vegetation on the hills are still green and putting forth great effort to uphold their place in the sun while swathes of other plants have given up and turned brown. Even though I don’t like to see the hills turn brown, that time where the last vestiges of spring and the heat of summer collide is so beautiful in its contrast.
These earrings by Sylvie Peraud is just one such example. Greens turn to yellow as the plant’s energies are sapped, but when seen on a hill with the morning sun hitting it, it’s just radiant. I don’t know if Sylvie was thinking this when creating these, but it reminds me of the places I was running just a couple of weeks ago out here in Southern California.
Writing about these lead me to Sylvie’s blog where she has some really stunning new work you just have to see as well. Jump on over to her blog and check out her wide range of work on her Flickr pages when you take a creative recharge break today or this week. It will be a good mid-year and mid-week place for new inspiration.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.
The Ups and Downs of Summer
July 20, 2015 Inspirational Art
In the northern hemisphere we are in the midst of summer, but Mother Nature is showing her many sides from hot and still to muggy and stormy, from tornadoes to floods to hurricanes. Down in the southern hemisphere, summer days are a distant memory, but nonetheless, summery colors are making a surge on the pages I’ve been visiting.
Lillian de Vries created this pendant with its interesting visual and tactile texture as inspiration for a summer challenge on Craftliners.com, a blog for the European wholesale company Craftlines, for which Lillian is a designer. The colors are mostly warm but delicate with a scattering of dark speckles falling out of a cooling ceiling of blue. It strikes me as a visual interpretation of a summer memory with its up and down days scattered through the memories of hot afternoons and those thankfully cool mornings.
Lillian plays with all kinds of texture, both visual and tactile, as well as stopping to create miniature and faux foods here and there. If you’re have a gratefully cool morning hiding from the heat, or are down under dreaming of warmer days, make a temperature appropriate beverage and escape into the creative wanderings on her blog and Craftliner’s pages.
Lining Up Your Own Dots
July 15, 2015 Inspirational Art
So, all this talk of lines and dots has you wanting to try out your own dot-line compositions, right? Well, being the cheerleader that I am, I’ve gone out and found a little something that might get you playing with some of those dots and lines regardless of how enthralled you are with the subject. Just try out this easy and rewarding application technique.
Svetlana Belova generously shares her process for creating these lovely pendants on LiveMaster. The types of patterns you can create this way are endless. It really lets you explore the possibilities without committing to a block of mokume or being limited by a stamp or texture sheet. This kind of work is very meditative and can be a fantastic way to relax or get yourself into a creative zone before working on something else.
Svetlana shares her techniques on her blog and sells her work through her LiveMaster shop where you can see other examples of this and other pretty compositions.
Dots and Lines Juxtaposed
July 10, 2015 Inspirational Art
This Friday I’d like to leave you with a little something to try out this weekend. I still have a myriad of examples showing the combination of dots and lines, and we may just pull out a few more for next week, but for now, how about we just have some fun? France’s Marie-Charlotte Chaillon shares this versatile tutorial for juxtaposing dots and lines in a piece of jewelry, although it could easily be transferred to home decor or other decorative art. I like that the ‘dots’ here aren’t your basic option. The cane that will make the stacked dots is rather nice on its own for accents or mosaic work. It looks rather like an interesting twist on the pixellated retro cane. The white seems to be key as the gradation gives it a bit of an inner glow. Any color palette that appeals to you would do, but the graphic nature does show off bright contrasts quite nicely.
Marie-Charlotte is pretty generous with the cane-centric tutorials, so if that is where your creative meanderings are on right now, head over to her blog or her Pinterest board specifically dedicated to her tutorials and have yourself a blast!
Dots, Lines and Landscapes
July 8, 2015 Inspirational Art
I had something different planned for today, but this stunning work by Claire Fairweather popped up on the IPCA Facebook group, and I just had to ensure many more of you had the pleasure of enjoying dots in literally a BIG way.
This is a mosaic collage, and unlike most polymer work, it is quite large. Claire’s description gives you the idea:
“Here it is, my first large ‘dot mosaic’ artwork. It is made up of about 6,935 tiles and took over 150 hours to complete. Each tile has been handmade, from polymer clay, and glued in place on the canvas before being grouted with coloured acrylic modelling paste.”
Ambitious? Yes. Worth it? I think so! How I’d love to see this in person to see all the detail. But yes, we have our dots here used in varying sizes to enrich the texture of the mosaic. Line is used in a very subtle way to convey the horizontal arrangement of the landscape. The lines are created by the change in color rather than the arrangement of dots. Still it fits this week’s theme, but more importantly, it’s an impressive piece. Would you dedicate the time and resources to creating such a large piece? In other mediums, that much work going into one piece is not unusual. But, it does show how sincere dedication that we can all enjoy.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.
Dots, Lines and Tendrils
July 6, 2015 Inspirational Art
** Sorry this went up half a day late. We had an error in our scheduled time. But back to regularly scheduled postings …***
We’ve talked about using lines as design elements for direction and energy before and about dots and their use as accents and to create rhythm, but I don’t think we’ve spent much time looking at what happens when you use the two together.
There are many, many beautiful examples of using line and dots as a combined design treatment, but I think these brooches by Ivana Brozova are some truly stunning recent examples I’ve run into. In this case, dots are used to create lines. Or maybe the lines are distorted until they look like strings of dots. Either way, the effect is the same—a strong, rhythmic and directional vibrancy radiating from a center that itself is alive with slow, winding lines in the form of tendrils. It makes for rather mesmerizing work.
Ivana is rather fond of lines and dots used together. You can see more great examples in some of her older work, as well as admire Ivana’s new and rather shiny pieces on her Flickr photostream.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.
A Merging of Felt and Polymer
July 3, 2015 Inspirational Art
Today’s piece is both an outside inspiration and a polymer piece. It’s a little different take on the aged look in that it isn’t so much about that look of disintegration as it is about the way materials meld together over time that have been left out in natural surroundings.
I can’t say what Russia’s Svetlana was thinking of when she created this felted scarf, but this makes me think of the way rocks become embedded in sandstone or maybe how they are exposed by the low tide on a beach. The combined textures of fuzzy felt and smooth polymer along with the little bead accents create a rich landscape that I think must be reminiscent of some place that she has been. It seems an unusual choice for a scarf, but that just adds to the mysterious atmosphere of what she’s done here.
Felting was the one thing I never took to in my years of fiber art work, but then, I was taught mostly the classic thick felting techniques. The more textural and undulating applications and forms that are becoming popular these days feel more broadly appealing. If any of you have a penchant for felting (or are intrigued enough by this to want to try it), the page I found this on is actually a tutorial on how she created the piece. The textures you’ll see just from the in between steps are worth a gander, so hop on over to Svetlana’s Livemaster blog page and maybe drop by her shop as well.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.
Aged Absence and Added Color
July 1, 2015 Inspirational Art
The absence of something can be just as intriguing, or even more so, than the addition of something to a piece of jewelry. In these beautiful headpins, we actually have a little of both.
If you find yourself inexplicably drawn to these but not really knowing why, you’re not alone here. There is something unusual about this faux deterioration, but it takes a minute to understand what it is. The corrosion these polymer beads emulate speaks to a passage of time and disuse, but in this case, it is also a reveal. How often are you likely to see a rusted out piece of iron or old steel eaten away only to show brilliant color underneath? Well, it’s quite unlikely you’d see a turquoise blue like this beneath a bit of unused metal, but somehow it feels right. The corroded look shows an eating away of the form, and the unusual blue, added by jewelry artist Alison Sachs, adds to it. So we are drawn by the subtraction of form, the addition of color and the unusual juxtaposition that looks like something mother nature might have created even though it isn’t common.
And these are only headpins. But hey, headpins got a bit of attention as well in the last issue of The Polymer Arts where you could learn to make your own quick and easy headpins. Take those lessons and add interesting polymer bead-like ends as Alison does in your favorite canes, textures or other clay treatments. The old and well-worn look can be seen throughout much of Alison’s work, which you can find on her Etsy page and more or less on her blog. The images were not coming up for me on the blog last time I checked in, but maybe they will soon.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.
Almost Ancient
June 29, 2015 Inspirational Art
The obvious visual signs of age have been at the center of many conversations I’ve had this week. Many of us try very hard to cover up the signs of aging in ourselves because we don’t think they are considered beautiful. But I, for one, think the visual changes that come with age and being well-used can be quite beautiful. I do admit that I prefer to see these marks on inanimate objects rather than on myself, but even the soft wrinkles beneath the eyes and the laugh lines on the face have an inviting texture. They show we have lived and laughed; that we got out and lived our lives. That we have stories to tell.
I do believe that same feeling–that there are stories where we see age and change–is why we are drawn to old items and why we enjoy the aged faux looks we can achieve in polymer. This necklace here by Staci Louise is a kind of faux ceramic, but both the forms and the crackling affect make the set feel like something almost ancient. Doesn’t it make you want to hear the history of the civilization that bore these? And have a chance to ask about the significance of the beads, and where they got their color?
Luckily, the creator is not from some distant past, but is alive and well today. Staci even has a tutorial for her technique. Find it in her Etsy shop after you drop by her blog to see how she transforms white clay into these spectacular beads.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.
Would you call yourself a selfish person? I doubt very many of us would think that way about ourselves. Yet, as artists, we often find ourselves “stealing” time away from others or other things to do what we love, reveling in it when we have it. Is that selfish? I mean, it is more about us than anyone else, isn’t it?
Yes, it is about us, and that is as it should be. In the requested comments for last week’s giveaway (scroll down to see the winner and this week’s giveaway), participants mentioned some version of the “me time” aspect of getting to sit down and create more than anything else. I mean, I know we create because it is something we enjoy, regardless of what anyone else thinks, but I just love that so many people acknowledged and celebrated it. We should!
I strongly believe that everyone should have something of their own, something they can turn to in order to express themselves or at least put something out into the world that would not have existed without their desire to create it. The art we create gives us purpose, exercises a uniquely human part of our brains, and helps us to love ourselves. Not to mention that we deserve the joy we get from it!
But, by definition, that is selfish—doing something because it’s what we want. I wish our society would get over the idea that doing something for ourselves is bad. I think not doing things for yourself is self-negligence. Why is that not a commonly understood thing?
This also highlights the bigger, contradictory world that we inhabit. We live in such strange societies where selflessness and humility are expected or requested, and yet we are also pushed to strive for excellence in what we do. How do we reach excellence without focusing on ourselves? And then there is this silliness where we are not supposed to acknowledge when the work we do is good or that we’re proud of it. If we do, others may think we’re being arrogant or grandiose.
So, do we strive to be great and then pretend that we’re mediocre? We talk about contrast being good in art, but this is so not the right kind of contrast!
I’ve long found the dichotomy of these contradictory but societally prescribed behaviors beyond aggravating as well as having the potential to be debilitating. I think that is why it made me so happy to see so many people acknowledging their creative hours as me-time, self-care, and a time of wonderfully selfish joy. Keep it up, I say!
Now, let’s talk about the good kind of contrast in art.
Design Refresh
Let’s look at the beautiful brooch by Lyne Tilt that opened this post. What do you notice first about this? There’s a lot going on in this little space, isn’t there? What are the three things that jump out at you as far as design elements?
I’m going to say color, shape, and texture. Did you come up with the same three? There is also a lot going on with marks and size. So, any combination of those would be spot on.
How about design principles? What do you think is the number one principal used in this design? Sure, we could refer to scale and proportion considering all the different sizes of the layers, or we could talk about focal point or even just key in on the centered composition. But the one thing this has in spades is contrast.
Obviously, there is color contrast in all the major color characteristics—she has a vibrant trio of warm colors contrasting the cool of the blue and cyan; color values range from the dark blue and deep red to the moderate orange to the light yellow and pale polished silver; and, if you check your CMY color wheels, you’ll see that the color of the bottom layer is a blue-cyan whose complementary AND split complementaries are the yellow, orange, and red that you see in the upper layers.
But doesn’t a color palette have to have at least one common characteristic between all the colors? Well, ideally, yes, and this does. Here it’s saturation. These are not muted colors. The orange may be slightly tinted (has some white in it) but not enough to feel it’s gone off base from the saturated characteristic that ties them all together.
Now, look at the contrast in the textures. The top and bottom layers might have the same texture, but the rest are vastly different. There are even different materials—metal and clay. But they work together pretty well, don’t they? Why?
The textures work together in part because they are all drastically different—the wide variety is part of the charm of this piece. But, like color, they need something to tie them together.
Did you notice that the textures are applied to the entire layer from one edge to another? Thier differences are connected because the application on each layer is the same. That does seem to be enough to allow them to exist in the same piece and not have it feel completely chaotic.
The shapes, on the other hand, are not completely different but they are not the same either, right? They are all some version of a hand cut circle, but some of them are definitely more oval. I think pulling back on the amount of contrast between the shapes also helps to rein in the potential chaos all this dramatic contrast and color and texture could fall into. The centered composition also adds a bit of calm to the piece.
Let’s take this week to consider the design principle of contrast. Would your pieces benefit from more contrast, or do you need to rein some of that in? Remember, it all depends on your intention. There are no wrong levels of contrast, at least not in art.
Last Week’s Giveaway
Drum roll please…
This last week’s randomly chosen winner is Eloise B! I’ve spoken to her and her clay is already on the way. Congrats Eloise!
This Week’s Giveaway
Thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s giveaway through comments on the post. As mentioned above, it really made me happy to see all the fantastic, positive and self-caring observations. I also hope it gave you a moment to focus on and appreciate what you love so much about creating.
So, let’s do this again.
- This week I have a selection of Sculpey clays in 2 new Soufflé colors, 3 new Premo colors, and 2 big 8 oz. blocks of clay stash basics—Sculpey III in Pearl and Silver. That’s 26 ounces of fresh clay along with a three-piece set of Sculpey silkscreens.
- Or if outside the US, I have a $25 Tenth Muse certificate, since it would be such a gamble to ship clay outside the US.
How to Win:
- Put a comment in the blog comments* (below), telling me what type of contrast you enjoy creating most in your own work, or the type of contrast you wish you used more of. And, yes, if you want to share pictures, you can do so by including a link. Just don’t put more than one link in or it may spam filter the comment.
- Note: It can take some time for the comment to appear if you’ve not commented before since, due to annoying spamming, I have to approve it .
- Giveaway winners will be chosen by random—it will NOT be based on your answers. I do hope you’ll give it some thought anyway. The answers could be helpful to you as well as interesting for the rest of us.
- And let’s say you can only win once this month so we can spread the love around.
- Get your comments posted by Wednesday March 17th at midnight Pacific time to get in for the raffle.
- I’ll announce the winner here on the blog next weekend!
I’ll put together yet another pack of goodies for a giveaway in next weekend’s post, so stay tuned here!
You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like…
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We are going to be dropping in on some big names this week and next to see what they are up to and what they have to inspire us with.
First up: Bonnie Bishoff. Her focus on jewelry these last couple years has been a journey through a variety of styles as she moves from working primarily in veneers on furniture with her partner J.M. Syron to smaller and more intimate work. But regardless of the style, her quietly strong and confident sense of color and pattern mark each piece like a signature. These lovely earrings are paired almost solely by color scheme although they do work within a limited set of variations in composition, visual texture and shapes. Each variation relays a slightly different mood, adjusted through the level of contrast in value and hue. The subtlety of this communication is what really brings home how masterful her color work is.
You can see what I mean by looking at the body of her work. You can do so by jumping onto her Instagram page and the website she shares with J.M. Syron.
Read MoreHappy Monday, fellow polymer enthusiasts. I’m not sure how this week is going to turn out as I have not had time to put together a full-fledged theme so we’re gonna go with “things that caught my eye” for now.
I’m sure you can understand why this piece by Marion Le Coq aka Fancy Puppet, might have caught my eye. They are fun and refreshing pieces, wonderfully finished and composed. She connects all her elements with repetition of motifs, colors, or other things. For example, the leaf off the apple is reflected in the leaf addition on the back and hanging leaves. The carrot’s colors are reflected in its layered pieces behind it, and its crisscross of lines reflect the crisscross of the plaid.
I’m guessing the plaids and dots are silkscreen but the secret is probably available on her YouTube page where she has dozens of tutorials and review items. She’s also quite busy elsewhere online. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, Canal blog, and Etsy.
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I recently realized that I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the lowly squiggle. But who doesn’t like a well-done squiggle? I guess it’s hard to take it seriously with such a silly-sounding name but the sound of the word itself describes it so well.
I myself am very fond of squiggles and apply them throughout my work, primarily as accents, but some people take the squiggle to wonderfully elevated levels as the central theme of their piece.
This pin by Petra Nemravová is an excellent example of the squiggle stealing the show. The organization of these wonderfully unruly squiggles brings a regular rhythm to their organic movement. It reins in the rambling energy that this kind of squiggle contains. The bright array of colors, which could also get out of hand, is held in check by a regular graduation from one color to the next, helping to create an energetic but contained feeling.
Petra is such an advocate of bright colors and cheerful compositions. Enjoy a stroll through her colorful world on her Flickr photostream. She is also the genius mind behind the wonderful selections found in the online polymer shop Nemravka, serving the European polymer and craft communities and beyond.
Read MoreI decided this week I would like to talk about work that speaks to me. Well, I don’t mean that I want to talk about me so much as use pieces that do speak to me as examples of what it means when a piece of artwork elicits a response from the viewer.
For various reasons, I ended up thinking and talking a lot about how we define art this past week. I have long felt that art should be defined as work that is made with expression and intention, with a goal of eliciting an intellectual or emotional response. Yes, I know a lot of people will say that it is the individual who should determine what art is to them but I would like to suggest that such a statement is not quite the right phrase. Each of us can determine what is good art or what is bad art—to that I absolutely agree. But shouldn’t a label such as “art” have a more specific definition than just whatever someone thinks is art, or just something that is made by hand, as the definition would seem to be nowadays?
I am guilty of this broad use as well so I’m not pointing fingers, I’m just a big proponent of using language to effectively communicate and I think it would be great if the English language had a well-defined use of the word “art” that allowed us to talk about work born of self-expression versus craftwork or artisan work created from skilled hands.
My definition also brings up the question of what does it mean to elicit a response? It is not as confined a concept as it might sound like so I thought I’d try to define that a little this week.
For a piece of work to elicit a response all it has to do is make the viewer stop and feel something, or stop and think. It could be something as simple as making them smile or as complex as questioning societal norms. It can be positive such as emitting a sense of peacefulness or negative such as work with a high shock value geared to make you appalled or angry. If the piece is made with intention, part of that intention will, consciously or unconsciously, be to communicate with the viewer, and if the artist is communicating then they are attempting to elicit a response. Good art accomplishes this. Bad art is too distracting in its failings to communicate or illicit anything of value.
This piece here feels like a very personal piece for Shannon Tabor who commented on her Instagram post of this that “I’m back to my roots in design with ‘Compass’. My Back To Basics study is over and I’m anxious to get all these design ideas out of my head and onto my clay!”
I can feel her excitement for this new work in the composition and surface treatment of this necklace. There is a buzzing kind of energy from the scratches and the asymmetrical placement of elements but there’s also a reservedness in the basic geometric shapes and the subdued and shaded palette. I found that I was drawn to the contrast between that reserved feeling and that feeling of excitement. It reminds me of that point in time right before things really take off in some exciting new venture, which I love, and so that must be what made me stop and spend time with this piece.
So, you see, Shannon may have been working on something specific to what she wanted to explore but the intention in her skilled design choices allowed me to connect with her emotion, or at least my sense of what her emotion must’ve been. That’s eliciting a response. And to me, that’s what makes it art.
See what else Shannon is up to by following her on Instagram or hopping over to her website.
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Guest Blog Post by Teresa Pandora Salgado
Van Gogh admitted to the world, “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” Me too, Vincent.
One of the most infuriatingly fabulous things I cannot do is make cane like Jon Stuart Anderson. Jon creates canes in a cunning palette that leans in close and whispers, “Go ahead…take your time…look at me.” And I surely do. And the world does too.
I love the way Jon cruises nimbly past the pedestrian cane crossing. He jaywalks that trodden path without ever touching the ground. Obvious contrast? He doesn’t need it, no matter how much the cane is reduced. Nor does he require new colors. Jon keeps it fresh with precision, composition, and balance. Neat trick.
Jon Anderson is known for his millefiori animals: elephants, turtles, bulls, and birds. You’ll notice the creatures have a flesh and blood sense about them, a beating heart beneath their rich robes. So you look and you look and then, just when you think you know him, Jon takes you to another fork in the road. To the left, skulls, vessels, lights. And to the right, guitars. Ohhh, the guitars.
So, go ahead. Look. Be inspired. Aspire.
See Jon’s work at his website here.
Teresa Pandora Salgado is a polymer clay artist, designer & instructor from Los Angeles, California. She has made 87 YouTube tutorials which have garnered over 2 million hits from viewers in 151 countries. In addition to teaching live workshops on millefiori complex caning across the U.S., Teresa helms the online store, Tiny Pandora Crafting Boutique, which featuresMilll her specialized tools and kits.
Read MoreIn perusing #the100dayproject on Instagram these past couple weeks, I’ve noticed that veneers are quite the thing to be experimenting with right now. Whether you call polymer sheets you work with surface design, surface treatments, or polymer veneers, it does feel like the clay surface is having a renaissance of exploration.
One of the first of these explorations that I’ve noticed in recent weeks was this piece by Lindly Haunani, which she posted on Facebook. Of course, the queen of color is going to have a showstopper based on her color choices alone, but the subtle texture and the composition of the layout of the veneers, for all the energy of the color and lines, has such a satisfying sense of calm and rightness. There is that obvious sense of intention and deftness of skill that brings refinement to such unquestionably masterful work, even in a piece the artist claims is exploration.
Explore more of Lindly’s work on her website and Facebook page.
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Another great contribution to the Spring issue was in our artists’ gallery. All of our artists are unique in their approach but it is Isabelle, known online as Bellou, whose designs are really standing out.
Isabelle creates bold, contemporary adornments that are polished to a glass-like shine. Her work often has a centered focal point but the balance of the components are set in asymmetric arrangements or are all shaped differently with different treatments. However, in all the disparity there is a common element that brings it together.
This is one of the pieces she sent us that we couldn’t work into the gallery pages. On the one side, there are wide, solid pieces, dense with texture, but on the other side, the space is opened with a series of cut-out shapes that have the same mica shift texture as the other side. The rest of the center piece brings in a grounding energy to the movement of lines and shapes that play across the necklace.
To see more of Bellou’s work, take a look at her shop pages here.
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