Contrast of Self
March 14, 2021
Design lessons, Supplies & other fun stuff
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.
The Goodies:
- 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…
Balancing Color & Contrast
November 26, 2018
Inspirational Art
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.
A Serving of Fruits and Veggies
October 15, 2018
Inspirational Art
Happy 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.
Elevating the Squiggle
September 17, 2018
Inspirational Art
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.
Eliciting a Response
August 27, 2018
Inspirational Art
I 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.
Piecing It All Together
August 20, 2018
Uncategorized
Happy Monday to you all. Business first… preorders for the fall issue of The Polymer Arts is available online now. We don’t have a precise publication date but looks like mid-September. I’ll let you know here on the blog, in our newsletter, and on the website when we know. Again, thank you for your patience with me while I work on healing my overworked joints.
Okay, one more piece of wall art, this time by the inventive Angela Barenholtz. I know it seems like we’ve been talking about wall art for a couple weeks but this will probably be the last for a bit. I picked this one for a couple reasons having little to do with wall art.
For one, it’s a really fun piece with its variety in color, visual texture, and even the long shapes that make up this “polymer quilt.” Creating with a large variety of primary elements makes for energy-infused and eye-catching work. But, the trick is that everything still needs to work together and have some kind of relationship. In this case, the relationship is in the consistency of the type of pieces inserted into this quilt—long and evenly cut strips of visual texture arranged in a square composition. With this much consistency, you can go nuts with the variety of color, texture, and pattern.
Each one of these could actually sit on its own—like it could be a pendant or brooch if small enough, or even a pair of earrings. Giving yourself a canvas of a certain size and shape releases you from having to be overly concerned about the bounds of individual elements and construction of the work, particularly if you’re creating jewelry, and you get to play with what you place on that canvas. I imagine a lot of you might find that attractive, being we are so in love with our surface treatments, canes, and textures. How many times have you fallen in love with just the sheet of clay you were working on before it became anything? Creating a simple surface to work with can allow you to present those fantastic results in a fun and easy manner.
Angela is all about surface design and variety. You can see that by looking at her Flickr photostream. She also generously shares her techniques in her published tutorials which you can find on Etsy.
Inspiration, Aspiration, and Jon Stuart Anderson
June 25, 2018
Inspirational Art
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.
Muted Veneer
April 16, 2018
Inspirational Art
In 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.
Creative Composition
March 7, 2018
Inspirational Art
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.
The art form with the ultimate bits-and-pieces approach has to be mosaics. With mosaics you can take any material that can be collected in chunks that are small enough to puzzle together among themselves or with other smallish chunks. That makes for a lot of possibilities. The possible forms for the application of mosaics is pretty wide open. Even opening the form is possible and breaking the frame is a possibility with mosaics.
Robin Evans‘ choice of material is primarily glass from which she creates jewelry and, apparently, some pretty amazing wall art in a mosaic style. I hesitate to call it a full mosaic as it looks like the swaths of gold, copper, and green are cracked glass or mirrors which gives the impression of a mosaic even though it’s not although it is a pretty cool look.
Then there are the actual mosaic parts which not only flow through from one panel design to the next but also move right off it and onto the wall to make their ways across. This not only connects the vertical panels but brings the piece alive with movement that breaks the frame of each one. And it’s shiny!
I couldn’t find a gallery of much of Robin’s wall art or at least not a gathering of it but you can find pieces scattered among her jewelry on her Facebook page, in her Etsy shop and on Instagram.
Weekly Inspirational Challenge: Create something beautiful from unassuming elements. This could be a great way to use old canes, extra beads, scrap clay and even cured and deserted elements. See what you have in your spare bins and boxes in your studio space and see what can be resurrected from the stuff you set aside.
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Bringing disparate pieces together to make something interesting and alluring is not an easy thing, even for the experienced. Although I talk about design in very specific terms and point out “what an artist did here”, the truth is, very few of us are consciously aware of all the particular design decisions we’ve made. It is, most of the time, quite an intuitive process which lends itself well to creating from many different elements but it makes it hard to define what is working and what isn’t if you don’t have that design language in your head.
The piece here, a necklace by India’s Rashi Verman is an example of using a lot of disparate parts but bringing them together so they look related. The color scheme of black and red help build that relationship as does the regular, almost-a-rectangle type shapes. But the really uniting elements is the level of exploration that is evident. I didn’t think each piece of the necklace was planned nor was the variety of techniques. This had to be a very intuitive piece. It teeters on chaos but Rashi pulls back just before going over that edge.
For more of her explorations, see her Facebook page or Flickr photostream.
Right now I must get back to putting all the pieces of my studio together. I had all the boxes in the huge side room which left the studio office feeling airy and clean but now that I must get down to vetting our articles for the next issue and finish the ones I’m writing, I have half unpacked boxes everywhere but like the necklace here, I will find a way to make it all work together. So forgive me if I am slow to answer emails and such–unpacking and getting a new issue ready makes for quite a chaotic time!
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I do like to keep busy, but I have to say the last few weeks have been beyond what any normal human should do to themselves. And I do say, I am doing this to myself because I am fully capable of saying no to some things but I have a very hard time doing so! So I’ve been piling it on and have to-do lists to keep track of my to-do lists and yet, I am a pretty happy camper.
Bringing lots of parts of things together can feel like chaos but with a little organization and stepping back to see the whole picture, it can look pretty good. I’m using this concept as a way to step into the things I want to show you this week … pieces made from pieces, in layers and repetition, doing the whole gestalt thing whereby the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Following me still?
This charming pendant is an example of bringing together a lot of little things to present a pretty nice picture. It is a series of simple cane slices put together with a bit of texture and an embellishment here and there, creating this little scene. Kim Detmers has made a number of these dragonfly garden pins but this is the most eye-catching, I think. Whereas the others are nearly all greens and blues, keeping the range all on the cool side of the color spectrum, this one has a dragonfly with yellow-orange wings which makes it stand out and creates a strong focal point. The many diagonal lines in the composition adds to the energy and drama, but just a little. It’s still pretty idyllic which has as much to do with the calming blue and green color dominance as the subject matter.
Kim tends to keep things light and bright with a penchant for fantasy-esque themes as you can see in her Etsy shop. I don’t see any Dragonfly Gardens here but there are a few to compare by doing a Google image search.
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Things breaking down is not always a bad thing as evidenced by Lee Ann Armstrong‘s cuffs you see here. She says these are “brusho crystals on raw polymer clay, baked and ‘sealed’ with Kato liquid clay.” She goes on to say that the crystals wouldn’t stabilize on polymer which I believe is why she sealed it. But the lack of stability doesn’t, literally, appear to be a bad thing.
The disintegration of color would seem to come from these being a watercolor related application. The crystals’ spread of color adds to the weathered look which, regardless of the faux worn appearance, comes across as lively and rich, largely due to Lee Ann’s color choices.
She created several of these cuffs and seems to have integrated either the crystals or a related material into recent cuffs seen on her Flickr pages. But take a look at her Facebook page for the posted cuffs on this series in particular.
Weekly Inspiration Challenge: Find the beauty in the weathered and worn. Take a walk or go through a thrift store and note the texture, colors and stories in the things you find. Take this home with you and let it inspire a free form creation this weekend.
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I like things with a little wear and tear, it’s true. The reason being is that things with dents, dings, scars, and worn out spots also have stories and usually interesting ones. It’s true that you can’t ask the worn down and beat up chair you find at the thrift store who had so neglected it but one can imagine what it might have been through including how it persevered through the years to sit there before you asking to be loved.
Patina is kind of like metal’s mark of perseverance. In the face of the many elements in our world, metals will persist, reacting to salt in the air or the acidity of water by producing an alternate finish. The metal loses some of its composition in the process and eventually this will break it down but it will hold out until the last and, in the meantime, we get to admire its struggle and the beautiful reactions that result from it.
I found this little piece of lively patina on the Flickr photostream of Christina Butler. It’s polymer with metal paints and patina solutions, similar to Swelligant. The patina represents something aged but then what kind of object would have layers so bent and twisted? What story did Christina have in mind when creating this? It shows disintegration with two perfectly round and shiny spots, as if saying that regardless of what has been lost, something beautiful will always survive. Well, that’s the start of my story for it at least.
Speaking of stories … you may note that Christina has been quite inactive on Flickr and her Etsy shop has been on vacation since 2014. Sometimes our artists just fade off and we can only guess at what happened in their lives to move them away from the art we see. But in Christina’s case, we actually do know. She and her partner Jay took over daily operations at Poly Tools in 2014, a company her mother started in 1999. Not shutting down the shop tells us that she has not given up on her own art work but has a lot of focus elsewhere. Luckily, we can still catch up with her on Facebook when not detoured by the offerings over at the Poly Tools website.
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Journal covers are very much like blank canvases, which means you can do anything you desire on them. Your medium is probably the only thing that will constrict you, but then you aren’t restricted to one medium, are you? Polymer is amazing and will always be my go to material but I wouldn’t ignore other wonderful options, especially since so many other mediums work so well with polymer.
Here is a journal cover that has no polymer on it but most of the materials used are quite familiar to polymer clayers and could be combined with it to create looks inspired by this texture rich cover. Gabrielle Pollacco uses an insanely wide array of paints, inks, powders, sprays, stencils, stamps and a few other things to create this cover. Sometimes, too many materials is like too many ingredients in a recipe … going overboard can really muck things up. But Gabrielle brings it all together here by limiting her palette and sticking with a weathered look as her thematic motif.
She seriously looks like she is having way too much fun in this video tutorial that she recorded of her full process for creating this cover. I now have a new list of products to find and try so if you watch this, you have been warned that it may result in a bit of frenetic online shopping! Also … the music she uses may get stuck in your head and have you bopping about the rest of the day. It’s not a bad thing. Just wanted to give you a head’s up so you are ready to defend yourself with the mute button if bopping is not appropriate at the time.
Weekly Inspiration Challenge: Create a journal cover for your goals and plans book. Try some new materials to really make it interesting. If you’ve not covered a journal or sketchbook before and find covering a pristine new book on your first try to be a bit too much pressure, create on a separate sheet of clay that can be glued to the journal later or, if you like it as is, can be a bit of inspiration to frame. A sheet of raw clay, cured between two tiles to keep it perfectly flat can be a great ‘canvas’ to work on.
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Not only is today’s journal cover an inspiration for what you can do with your own decorative journal cover, it’s a beautiful example of ‘painting’ with polymer.
England’s Monika Duchowicz actually does do a bit of acrylic painting on this along with the polymer applications but it doesn’t come across as painted. I would guess most of the painting is in the moss on the stone and in the water which is beautifully rendered and in a way that polymer would not be able to emulate in such a seamless fashion. With a successful background in painting, it’s no wonder that the water and its complex reflections look so real.
Journals are a primary form for Monika, especially these painterly ones. You can view more of her journals as well as wearable art in her Etsy shop and on her website which is in Polish and English although some pages are just one or the other. You can always drop the URL of a page or parts of text into Google Translate if you come upon text that needs translating. .
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I’m sorry we are a little late posting this week. We had a few technical and timing difficulties but we are back on track now. Speaking of which … how many of you are still on track with your new year’s resolutions or plans for 2017? It can be so exciting to come up with the plans and goals but actually getting them done can be another matter. There are a number of things you can do to help keep on track but I think, the most important thing is to write it all down. There is something about having our ideas written out in black and white that makes us feel more committed to them, that makes them concrete and real in a way that an idea just floating around in our head does not.
So I was thinking that having a pretty journal to write those ideas in would be highly encouraging. Not only will you want to use a beautifully decorated journal, you are also far less likely to shove it in a drawer and forget about it. Write your goals, and the steps you need to take to reach them, in a beautiful journal and leave it where it can be admired as well as remind you of its contents. Of course, I’d encourage you to create your own beautiful journal cover and so, this week, we’ll focus on journal cover inspiration.
When talking journals and polymer, it is almost obligatory to show off a journal by Aniko Kolesnikova. Here is a gorgeous peacock cover she created last year. I love that it’s not just a polymer composition attached to the front but that it flows across the entire cover, including the back and spine, so that all the sides are connected. It’s still quite functional with less decor on the back so it will lay flat and be comfortable to write in but remains beautiful from any side.
Although a profusion of scattered crystals can so easily come across as garish, the be-jeweled feathers work in this cover as the bright and abundant plumage blends with them. The beautiful labradorite is also well integrated although I have a feeling that it really pops in person as reflected light and colors would change within its layers as it is moved about.
Aniko has over a dozen views of this particular piece on her Flickr photostream so you can more closely examine all the details. Of course, you can also see her other journals there, on her website and on her Mandarin Duck Facebook page.
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For a last look at moths this week, I thought I’d share this work by Cheryl Lee Myers of Elemental Urchin. This is probably not polymer clay but rather two-part epoxy clay. I say that because for one, I found that she paints these all on a black base that looks very much like epoxy I’ve used and, two, she never mentions polymer.
I did wonder if her decision not to specify the type of clay she uses was because she is very much into nature and mother earth so she didn’t want to see the word polymer or epoxy in her nature-centric listings. I personally don’t see that as a problem but not everyone understands the choices we make as artists, even when us tree-huggers create in plastic and such. I have a lot of thoughts on that subject and I’ll be talking about that at this summer’s Synergy 4 in Pennsylvania which, by the way, opened registration this week so hop over to get signed up and start making your travel plans!
But regardless of the reason Cheryl doesn’t mention the type of clay she uses, the idea of recreating natural elements combined with actual natural elements is something I thought might inspire a few readers who haven’t tried it yet. She also changes up what nature has given us, much like our artists from earlier this week.
Cheryl’s textures and painted wings–see the moths wings with what look to be lily pads and stars in them?–are visually rich as is the dominant purple color palette. The light touch of metallic powder and the shine of the stones create an alluring combination but one not quite like what we’d find in the wild but obviously it exists in this artist’s mind!
I found Cheryl’s work on Instagram but you can also take a look at her work in her Etsy shop.
Inspirational Challenge of the Week: Find something in nature and recreate it … your way. Change or add to what nature has already done and make it your version.
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