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.
Reader Corine Lindhorst was kind enough to write and share the work of this highly talented paper artist whose work you see here. Although it’s not extruded, the use of long strips of paper is not unlike using long snakes of extruded clay to form patterns and images. The images in the case of these paper illustrations by Yulia Brodskaya are incredibly fluid and capture nuances that some pencil and paint artists with their limitless color and texture options can’t always accomplish.
Yulia started working as a graphic designer and illustrator until realizing her passion was in paper. Now, she says she “draws with paper instead of on it.” And very, very successfully I might add. In just the 8 years since she started experimenting in paper illustration, she has amassed a large list of huge clients from Starbucks to Godiva, Target, Sephora and The New York Times Magazine. This is one of her more colorful and fun pieces, but may not be the most amazing of them. Her portraiture has some amazingly emotional eyes and facial expressions, especially considering the limitations of the medium. Or are they limitations?
Okay, you clay extruder illustrators … get to it. There is a market for you and one with deep pockets if you’re up for the challenge!
Take a closer look at Yulila’s work on her website but for a quick and powerful overview, take a look at this post on the “This is Colossal” blog.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Today, I pulled up this fun piece for you.
This is not, obviously, all about extrusion, but I couldn’t pass it up. This elephant is only one in a series of decorated elephant forms created by Latvian artist Kni Kni. She did one for each month of the year. This mandala elephant was created for August. She uses extruded ‘yarns’ as she calls them, to wrap around the center form, which was pressed from a handmade stamp. Her ‘yarns’ were also used to decorate the elephant’s features.
In other work, we see quite a bit of the extruded ropes wrapped in swirls and even indented to make the striated lines you see here, but it is usually used on fully covered forms. The open space on the elephant helps keep the finely and skillfully decorated piece from getting overwhelmingly busy.
You can read about how and why Kni created this particular elephant on her blog. These are actually even more amazing when you see the whole series. Go take a look at them all on her Flickr photostream.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
The popularity of the extruded cane has led to some wonderful experimentation using the reveal options provided by the nature of the cane. Laying these canes sideways gives you a series of layers to dig down into and expose.
This particular vessel created by Germany’s Vera Kleist Thom has these canes laid out in a weave pattern, but the shaving down of the outer layers gives it a kind of worn stone appearance. So, do we have woven stone? Intriguing. The combination makes for a beautiful, calm visual texture. The colors follow this calm theme by being primarily neutral, but there are a few rich reds and brilliant, ocean blues that accent the weave.
Give yourself a treat and look at the other vessels and jewelry she has created using this technique on her Flickr page. Just beautiful, contemporary pieces.
Carving out and revealing layers is nothing new for Vera, and right now, you can get some of her amazing cut-in bead necklaces and loose beads that we featured here in November of 2013 from her Etsy shop.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Within the 2014 fall issue of The Polymer Arts, in our regular feature, “Color Spotlight” created by Maggie Maggio, we have the amazing work of Switzerland’s Sandra Traschel. The patterning and illusions she creates in polymer canes come in large part from the inspiration and even the templates of various quilters. Although this is covered in the article, Sandra (as well as Maggie and I), thought it would be great to actually see which artists inspired what pieces, so you could really see how the work of other art forms can so beautifully inspire polymer art.
This quilt is an example of color illusion, which Sandra explores at length in her jewelry pieces. You can see the translation to polymer in the pendants below. I would not have thought to use quilting templates for canes, but it’s obvious how beautifully they work out behind a skilled and patient hand.
So, if you have your Fall 2014 issue at hand, go ahead and open to the “Color Spotlight” article and click through to all these great quilters. Can you spot which quilter inspired which piece of Sandra’s jewelry just by looking at the websites? If you don’t have your issue in hand yet, you can just hop over to Sandra’s Flickr pages to make the comparisons. And, of course, spend some time in the galleries of these amazing quilters by clicking their names to link through to their websites.
1. Bracelet Convergence Pattern: inspired by a quilting template by Ricky Tims.
2. Bracelet Hollow Cubes: For this piece, I don’t know who was the original artist. I was inspired by the book: ABC 3-D Tumbling blocks and more by Marci Baker
3. Bracelet Triangle Illusion: Pattern inspired by a quilting template of Carol Bryer Fallert (quilt: illusion)
4. Necklace Diamond Illusion: Pattern inspired by Carol Bryer Fallert (quilt: illusion)
5. Pendant Autumn Flower: Pattern inspired by Jinny Beyer (quilt: Mayflowers pattern)
6. Pendant Op-Art checkerboard: Pattern inspired by Jinny Beyer (quilt: Da Vinci Pattern)
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Another multi-artist article in the new Fall 2014 issue tracks the growth and experience of six artists that went through the Voila! creativity classes. We were given the opportunity to see what six emerging or accomplished artists developed as they went through an intensive, nearly year-long course that focused solely on developing creativity and personal voice rather than learning techniques and particular skills. The outcomes were quite remarkable. The growth those artists have continued to have is just as, or maybe even more so, remarkable.
Angela Garrod has been making leaps and bounds in her work the last couple years, but until the article came to me, I had not realized where much of this inspiration and push came from. Many of her designs have explored what can be done with extruding, but I have to say some of the pieces she experimented with earlier this year is pushing extruding far beyond what we’ve seen from the rest of the community. I would not have thought the patterning on this neck piece had anything to do with extruding, but now my mind is working furiously to try to surmise how it might have been accomplished. Angela’s creative exploration of technique, as well as design, seems to have been buoyed by her natural instinct to experiment. All with wonderful results.
Take a look at the other recent pieces Angela has been working on her Flickr page where you can see the chronological journey of her work. Be sure to read the article as well and follow the links to each of the artists to see what else they have been up to since their classes. It’s a fascinating story told through the artwork itself.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Another article in the fall issue that could have had a lot more examples in it if we had the room was about playing with faux techniques. The ideas outlined in the article are about emulating something that you find in nature, but adjusting characteristics to create something that doesn’t exist. A number of fantastic artists contributed their versions of this with examples.
Page McNall contributed an example of faux wood. A small faux log to be exact, but that is hardly the end of her beyond-natural faux examples. She is definitely one of those exploratory artists I often talk about, never really settling into one form or style, but does gorgeous work in her variety of approaches. One of her newer explorations that I just love and would have liked to have included are these this faux semi-translucent organics. This is really pushing the idea of natural faux polymer. The pieces look like they could be something in nature, but I’m pretty sure there is nothing quite like the majority of these.
To get a better view of the individual pieces here, as well as her rather fascinating work, visit her Flickr page. And for more ideas on how to play with and push faux techniques, well, see the latest issue of The Polymer Arts!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
So, this is that very special week after the latest issue of The Polymer Arts comes out where I share some of the things that we couldn’t squeeze into the packed issue we just sent out. We’ll chat a bit more about some of the contributors and their art work, as well as add some depth to the stories and concepts you’ll be reading about if you bought the issue (and if you don’t have it or don’t have it coming, you can get your copy on our website.)
For this fall 2014 issue, Deb Hart wrote what is probably the most ambitious article we’ve published to date. “Caning by Numbers: Complex Cane Design” has to do with canes and math. It’s rather intense, but we are already receiving some rave reports from readers who are just so excited to have a controllable way to measure and create precise complex canes.
The one thing we couldn’t do in this particular article was include more of Deb’s work so you could see her range beyond the owl cane that was used as the example for the concepts she teaches.
Here is one amazing bracelet Deb created with a variety of brilliant complex cane images embedded in layers of translucent clay. I am not a very accomplished caning clayer, so I won’t pretend I know all that went into this, but what I do know is that the layering gives it an ethereal quality that is rather mesmerizing, not to mention how lost one might get just trying to take in all the detail.
You can check out even more of Deb’s canes and other art work on her Flickr pages, her blog, her Etsy shop and her website. (Does she stay busy, or what?)
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Today is the day … The Fall 2014 issue of The Polymer Arts is out! The theme for this issue is “Time to Play” so we have tons of ideas for increasing your play time, drawing out your ability to let go and play, thoughts on the art of whimsy and humor, ideas for pushing faux effects, creating canes by numbers, creatively naming your work, and tons of other good stuff.
Print issues were sent to the post office for sorting and mailing on Thursday, and this morning, the digital issue was released. This collage gives you a peek at some of the articles you’ll find inside and a Flipbook sampler with many of the articles’ first pages is available on the website if you want a more thorough peek before buying.
Print Subscribers & purchases: Expect your copies to arrive anytime between today and mid-September; arrival times depend on where you live, but the closer to the northwestern US you are, where the issues are printed and mailed from, the sooner you’ll probably see them. International shipments take a minimum of a week and up to 3 weeks, again depending upon your location and mailing services.
Digital Subscribers & purchases: The issue was released digitally at 10am GMT (that’s 5am EST), so you should have a copy in your inbox if you purchased or renewed before Aug 28th. If you have this issue coming, but don’t see it in you inbox, check you spam or junk email folder. Keep in mind, issues are mailed to the email address that you gave us when you made your purchase, or if paying by Paypal, to your Paypal email of record (that’s the one you sign into Paypal with), which may not be this email address since the blog and subscription mailing lists are maintained separately.
If you have any questions about your subscription or order, write us at connect@thepolymerarts.com and we’ll be happy to help you out.
In the meantime, get some playtime in this weekend, be it in the studio or outside, and enjoy child like joy and discovery.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
I can’t give credit to the person who sent me this artist as I only have the email address it was sent from and a query back hasn’t received a response yet, but this was too good to pass by. (If you sent me this, write me back with your name!)
Astrid Brefort was the artist referred to and these fun, graphic pendants were what was sent in consideration of this week’s reader’s choice posts. It looks like texture, both tactile and visual in this piece, are what have been drawing readers lately. And layers! Here form created with layers again plays a role in enlivening the piece. Layers create depth and complexity while the halting swirl of the lines and the bright color contrast of the two colors bring visual energy against the white background. It’s simple elements brought together to create a vibrant and fun piece.
Astrid is one of those highly exploratory artists I occasionally talk about. If you take a look at her blog, she has been trying a little bit of a lot of things lately with great results. Go have fun poking around all the fun stuff on her blog and in her shop.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
