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.
Things are finally starting to settle down here in Sage land although it is always a whirlwind. Even so, I do like to stop and put up a touch of holiday cheer but I like things to be a bit beyond the norm. I have quite a few of the standard glass ornaments in my box that are really asking to be spruced up. But how to do it? I thought maybe we could get a few clever ideas from the very talented sorts out in the polymer world, and I certainly did!
I know black ornaments are probably not what you think of when think ornaments but just look at this beauty! The black background makes the colors of the cane slices just pop with such glamorous results. The ornament is by caning extraordinaire Meg Newberg. She actually created this a couple Christmases ago but left us with some instruction on how to get this effect. Find all the links to what she has for you on her blog post from that time. Then pop over to her home page for even more cool cane ornaments. She has a ton of ideas for these things. And check out her Etsy shop for a slew of cane tutorials.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Grab a basic holiday decoration and do something completely unexpected with it. Use unusual but festive colors, add texture where there usually isn’t and in general, put your kind of beauty on it. Celebrate with your style.
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To wrap up this week, we’ll look at a last echo of Fall with a little Asian flair.
This delicate imagery was created by Galina Milusenko of Ust’-Ilimsk, Russia. A simple palette of grays are brought up to a dramatic level with the brightness of scattered red leaves. The leaves that come off the end of the pendant create a beautiful flow into the space beyond the primary canvas. I love when a piece does this, breaking the boundaries of the canvas so it becomes part of the space outside it. It just gives a piece an extra bit of life.
I’m going to keep this short today. Its been a very busy week and there are a few things left to wrap up the Winter issue. The Winter 2016 issue, themed On the Surface, will be released December 4th. It’s a beautiful issue to finish out a great year. You can pre-order your copy or get a subscription on our website today.
If you want to see more of Galina’s work, take a look at her VK posts.
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I’m going to end this week with something that is translucent although maybe not the way you are thinking, a piece that shies away from the fall colors, moving into Winter, as so many of us are, at least in terms of upcoming plans if not weather.
I share this work with you upon one condition (okay, maybe it’s not a condition, but it is a very strong urging) … that you visit the links I have for you for this artist. Michelle McKinney is one of those artists whose work you need to see in its many variation to really understand the scope and beauty of her vision. She works in what she calls ” hand cut translucen
That fact that she calls her material translucent and we see it as delicate makes for a fairly dramatic contrast with our understanding that this is metal. There is further contrast between concept and material in that images are almost all organic and yet what they are made of is industrial. More impressive though, is the undeniable beauty in her subject matter, the usually simple images that are a bit torn and twisted. I think it garners empathy for the idea of something so delicate being in such a state. It’s rather hard to put one’s finger on exactly what it is that is so striking about these but it is there without question.
You need to look at her collection of work for yourself and see if the pieces speak to you in a similar fashion. Please treat yourself to the beauty of her pieces on her Facebook page which looks to hold the largest collection of images like these trees here. But also stop over at her website to see the black and white prints she is creating with these sculptural pieces, developing a collection she calls Ghost Editions. They are eerily beautiful and not to be missed.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Design or create something whose imagery is one thing but the texture, color or embellishment would say something else. Work in conceptual and visual contrast. Don’t think too hard about it or too long. Start with a few ideas and see where the muse takes you.
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Ok … back to our regularly scheduled program here. Here is a touch more on translucents this week since I started last Monday with a piece that was stated to be “in 3 parts” but got sidetracked the rest of the week. It’s rather hard to not complete the promised trio so here you are.
Here is a most magnificent brooch using translucents to create a visual illusion that will trip you out almost as much as the post-election mayhem. It looks absolutely three-dimensional but also, compounded by the organic placement and directional lean of the cane’s illusion, you could swear these open pod forms are alive. This piece so wonderfully illustrates the illusory possibilities of translucent clays.
The brooch comes from the genius of Melanie West who has been playing around with familiar themes and applications but with some fantastically unexpected results. I know this will get some of your imaginations just reeling but for even more fun and mind bending beauties, take a look at Melanie’s website and her latest creations posted recently on her Facebook page.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Use directional line to create a very intentional sense of movement. Create texture or line up motifs or forms to show strong direction in whatever interests you. If you like orderly, create orderly designs but try it in different orientations to see how it feels. If you want more organic or chaotic movement, be more random. If you want soothing, try flowing line.
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After finding the beautiful textured glass for Friday’s post, I noticed that my folder of art work to consider for blogs was full of translucent pieces, and almost all of them in the same basic color palette and all of them are fairly recent shares on Facebook. It could be because of the season but I don’t know how relevant that becomes when you set them side by side. So I thought I’d basically do that, presenting three pieces that are similar in color and using translucent clay but we’ll look at how it is used to create different moods.
This first one is a set of earrings by Jan Montarsi. The autumnal palette is there but the primarily vertical composition of the set, both in the direction of the swathes of color and the stacked squares lean towards a strong, organized atmosphere. Until you get to the visual and tactile texture. That reminds me of an energetic kid in a sandbox digging hole after hole. The circular shapes are jauntily wonky with colors blurring into each other, all with a very natural and organic feel. It says “I keep on the path but like to dance a bit on the way.” Well, that’s my read.
Jan created these in a class taught by Marie Segal at the annual Kentucky/Tennessee guild retreat this last month. He used his own ‘organic’ extruded cane technique as well. I guess he expected the colors to come out more muted because in the comments he made this observation:
“The amazing thing is the colors of these translucent clays were diluted by at least half with regular translucent clay and then placed on a translucent background and the color is still vibrant.” It’s good to know just how rich those packaged translucent colors can be.
Jan is our Americas Regional President for the International Polymer Clay Association as well as being an active clayer and contributor to a variety of information and educational outlets including The Polymer Arts magazine. His work can be found on Facebook and on Flickr.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Pick a set of colors and then pick forms that seem quite disparate from the color palette you picked. Light and bright colors combined with severely geometric shapes or dark, rich colors with light hearted squiggles. What does the contrast in shape do to the mood of the colors and vice versa? What can you add in terms of texture, line, or motifs that will further illustrate the mood you see within that juxtaposition of disparate elements?
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So there has been a bit of rain here in Southern California which I am very much enjoying. After years of Colorado weather, which constantly changes and rain is common albeit brief all summer into fall, I really appreciate what relatively few storms we get here on the south-west coast. So to wrap up my intense color week, I thought I’d pull out a kind of guilty favorite in my list of contemporary artists whom I admire, with this after the rain scene.
I say guilty because a part of me rallies against the level of commercialism this painter, Leonid Afremov, has achieved but the other hand, he makes a good living off it so who am I to knock that? And the work is beautiful to look at. His scenes are so intensely colorful and have so much energy. He commonly does rain or damp weather scenes which naturally have brighter colors and lots of reflected light. His choices tap into our strong reaction and attraction to saturated color as well as bright and shiny images and he does so without being garish. You have to admire that.
Leonid may not be communicating a particularly deep message and isn’t making any social or political statements but his paintings deserve notice because of the simple fact that he knows what we gravitate to. I think that is actually more in line with most craft art than other approaches in what is called ‘fine’ or ‘modern’ art. Craft tends towards showing us beauty more so than having a message and I think that is a very important and admirable. Make someone smile or sigh happily and you have done the whole world a great service.
See more of Leonid’s work on his website and Facebook page.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Take a break from creating and take time to just admire beauty. What is beautiful to you? If you can get out to some galleries or a museum and just take in what catches your eye, without any self-judgement as to the sophistication of your choices. If what you see inspires you, sketch or write out ideas to go over later in the studio.
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If you need further examples of going all out with color, but maybe not as showy as Monday’s piece, Anarina Anar is the go to artist for slightly washed but very colorful work.
I don’t know if she plans her colors or not. They just feel so organic, like maybe they were a happy accident that happened during the Hindu Holi festival (Festival of Colors) or, in the vicinity of her pan pastels, there was a localized tornado. Or cats. I’m going to go with cats.
But really, there is such abandon and yet cohesiveness in her color and her compositions. She keeps it all together with similar shapes and motifs as well as her signature faux ceramic look. She actually does do some limiting of her palette with some of her pieces but you hardly notice that since the colors wash back and forth in such brilliant saturation. It’s the use of the semi-opaque pastels and the layering and blending of the edges of colors that makes it appear muted. The constant shift keeps any one color from being overbearing which also makes it feel more organic.
Get other ideas about going wild with color while not being overly dramatic by heading over to Anarina’s Flickr site or her Etsy store.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Try using a lot of color but take it down a notch. You can mute the colors by adding a bit of black or white or even gray. You can antique the clay with washes of acrylic paint or inks in neutral tones. Or you can use pastels or colored pencils. Use at least 4 hues so you have both cool and warm colors. How do you make them work together?
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If you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you’ve probably heard me say a time or two that color can be a crutch. Form, line, composition and other design elements need to be considered with the same weight as color. However, if you are going to let color carry the design, it helps to make it just take over. In other words, don’t be restrained. Go all out!
You can certainly say that Luba Meshakinoy went all out in these Rainbow necklaces of hers. Not only is there a lot of saturated color, she placed them on the shine of metal foil and capped it off with clear epoxy resin to magnify the color and the shine. Yes, the design is a tried and true gradation of shapes in a symmetrical composition and nothing she has done here is new or surprising but she the thing that makes this so appealing–aside from all the yummy color–is that she didn’t hold back in her choices. It does result in a necklace that will take a big, colorful personality to really pull it off or be seen aside from the brilliant color but so what? The super bright personalities need equally bright adornment. We cannot make pieces to satisfy everyone or even most people. And we really shouldn’t.
I do know, however, that most people do love color on some level. We are easily drawn to it. And it’s a Monday! So go take a peek at her bright and shiny color on her website here.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Go crazy with color. I don’t know what that means to you, but push what you usually do. If you work with a lot of color already, how can you heighten the impact? Use 4 or more colors in high saturation or color clay with alcohol links, paints, mica powders or anything you have bright and colorful. Just let the color lead you on this.
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I’m not sure what the theme is going to be this week. I am just going to start here with this fairly unusual piece and see where the ideas take us. Some Mondays, you just gotta go with the flow.
Flow is part of what had me contemplating this piece by Marjana Cajhen. What caught my eye first–and was what you probably first noticed too, I’d guess–is that puzzle piece. This is looking like a progression of square shapes and then a puzzle piece shape pops up. Is this a geometric shape? It’s not organic but it seems a tad too complicated to be geometric yet it’s shape is balanced and measured and feels squarish in a way. However the edge of the shape keeps shifting gears. It’s that constant moving edge that makes it stand out, of course, but is this a good thing?
At first I thought this pattern change from squares might be too jarring but to take it away would take away all its draw. The unexpected shape is a type of contrast not to mention adding a bit of fun in what might otherwise be a bit of a static piece, even with the energetic linear texture. The other thing I wondered about was that choice of texture. Each piece has a different textural pattern but there is consistency in that inconsistency. And since the textures also are all made up of lines, there is a relationship between them there as well as in their black and white nature.
But you know what delights me the most? That spray of cord ends splayed across the corner of that end square. Between that and the puzzle piece, it seems Marjana’s choices are trying to break up an orderly gathering of stodgy squares and force them into a bit of play time.
This juxtaposition of geometric shapes and use of line , especially the scratch marks, are a regular theme in Marjana’s work. You can compare her ideas on her Flickr photostream or read up on her various adventures and explorations on her blog.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Create a piece with a repeated form but change one along the way in some unexpected manner. Try to think of something that is both related but not commonly seen with such forms. A string of light blue round beads could be interrupted by a miniature peach. A pattern of deep red flower canes can give way to a large yellow fireworks cane. The idea is to keep the repeated element related in at least a couple of aspects and then challenge yourself to come up with something no one would expect but somehow makes sense–the blue beads relate to the peach in terms of shape and size and the orange color is a direct contrast to the blue so they can work dramatically together. Flowers and fireworks have similar centrally blooming structures and the yellow and red are both warm colors so they work together. See where this is going?
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