Contrast of Self

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…

 

Degrees of Intention

Meredith Dittmar’s work is, surprisingly, freeform and spontaneous although her intention to “explore, illuminate, and break down the boundaries of the conditioned self” are well supported in her design choices.

Did you work on identifying colors similarities and contrasts, even though I was unable to get anything out midweek like I’d hoped? I ended up with an exceptionally busy week but, unlike many of these past months, it was mostly good, positive things going on. I’ll catch you up on some of that stuff at the end here (including notes about my latest big sale if you’re interested) but, this week, I thought we would take a break from the intensive design lessons so I could get back to writing what I call creative growth articles.

These kinds of articles were included in every Virtual Art Box but I had set them aside while we thoroughly explored color the past few months. I’d like to do these at least once a month now to keep you thinking about why and how you create and to give you a break from the lessons here and there.

The Question of Conscious Intention

When I started the Virtual Art Box, the first thing I wrote about was artistic intention. It was easily the most impactful thing I’ve ever put out if measured by the enthusiasm and number of the comments, messages, and emails I received and, if you read this blog regularly, you’ve probably noted that intention comes up over and over again. But I realized, after an interesting conversation recently, that I’ve never really talked about the variety and ways creative people approach intention.

The core question that came up in this conversation was about whether the person creating has to be consciously aware of their intention in order for the design to be intentional. In other words, can decisions be intentional without being understood by the creator? Sounds rather philosophical but it is, in truth a very practical and rather important question.

By definition, intention means that you have some knowledge of your motivations but, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are wholly conscious of them, not in a detailed way that allows you to verbalize it to yourself or others.

For instance, you could head to the grocery store intending to get something for your sweet tooth but you may not realize what you want until you’ve wandered through the bakery section and the candy section and then found yourself entranced by some caramel gelato in the ice cream freezer. Alternatively, you may have specifically headed out to get a pint of Talenti Caramel Cookie Crunch. The intention, and the outcome, would be the same for either trip out but there was a varying degree of awareness as to what you were after.

This works the same way when it comes to intention in art. You aren’t just fully intentional or not intentional in your design choices. There are variations and degrees to which you understand and apply your intention as you create although, I will argue, having some intention is necessary.

First of all, understand that when I talk about intention, I’m speaking about the concept, story, or theme that directs your design decisions. In the shopping trip example above, the intention was to satisfy a sweet tooth. In your artwork it could be anything from re-creating an image or place to telling a story to relaying a message to simply sharing your aesthetic tastes. But that intention guides your design decisions.

You could, for instance, choose round shapes for a pair of earrings. That choice might be made because round is a soft shape and the theme or story or idea behind your piece would be best supported by soft characteristics, but it also could be a gut feeling that round feels right compared to squares or triangles or amorphous organic shapes. If you have strong instinctual reactions to certain options for your design, you can absolutely make decisions based on that intuition. You just need to check that it supports and is related to your intention rather than it just being something that you are drawn to in general.

The Role of Instinct

Instinctive decisions are very common in many artist studios but they work best when there’s knowledge behind them. If a creative person is well versed on design, they will likely transition to working almost wholly by instinct at some point. That education and understanding works away in the background, guiding the artist’s instincts, but when they run into a problem, they still have the ability to puzzle out possible solutions based on the knowledge that they have. That is actually the primary intention that drives all my publications and this blog – to get you to the point where you understand design well enough for your design decisions to be instinctual. That way, you can approach your creative work with anything from a general to very specific intention and can begin to make purposeful decisions from the start.

Donna Greenberg’s latest post on Facebook: “WIP. Glazed bubbles and supporting texture coming in on this bad boy. Miles to go but each step helps me clarify my idea and even surprises me at times.” Because of the size and complexity of Donna’s vessels, planning has to be fairly well thought out before she really gets going but she leaves lots of room in her intention for discovery and alterations (via those clarifications she mentioned, I’m sure.)

There is also an argument in the art world that proposes that the artist does not have any responsibility to create with an intentional concept, meaning, or story for each piece, suggesting that it is completely up to the viewer and not the artist to give the piece meaning. I can’t say that I disagree with that but, if you create without any direction or some kind of framework to work off of, I think it becomes rather hard to create cohesive work that is meaningful to viewers.

I know, I am getting all abstract here so here’s a concrete example. Let’s say you want to create an eye-catching, one-of-a-kind piece to be showcased in your booth at the next fair or on the opening page of your shop’s website. You could just sit down with your materials and mess around with them until something comes out of it that you like. That is a valid way to design. But how do you even start doing that? Do you work with just whatever happens to be out on your table or do you pull out your newest, coolest materials and tools or do you open up your drawers and cupboards and stare at them until something jumps out at you (you know, kind of like when you stare at the fridge contents trying to figure out dinner)? I think we’ve all started something in this rather mindless way but how often are we successful compared to when we have some bit of intention?

Never Face a Blank Canvas

It is often said that facing a blank canvas is the hardest step in creating because it is, as yet, directionless which can be rather daunting. However, if you look for your intention first, then you never actually face a blank canvas. Instead, you come to that blank space or yet to be formed material with something to work on already. It’s the difference between walking into the grocery store only knowing that you want something to eat versus knowing you specifically want something sweet. You might not realize what you want is the gelato but at least you know where to head off to when you walk in those doors. Otherwise it is a lot of wandering up and down the aisles and that can be frustrating. You might not even make it that far. You might just turn around and leave because you don’t know which direction to take.

So, I do think you need to have something to work off of but it doesn’t always need to be something that you understand well enough to explain to someone. That was actually one of the hardest things for me in graduate school as I work towards my MFA in Poetry. Every word I chose in a poem was very intentional but a lot of the time there was more a feeling of it being right than an understanding about why it was right and yet, I was called on to explain my work all the time. I could always explain the theme of the piece and my inspiration but I could not always explain the specific significance of an image or sensation in the poem. To be honest, I think my lack of explanations was partly a kind of rebellion against the dissection of creative work. I know a lot of you feel that way too, that some (maybe most) art should be a visceral experience not an intellectual exercise.

However, trying to glean understanding from a piece of art, writing or any other creative work can be very satisfying so I’m not saying that I don’t think art should be approached that way. With some work, that’s the only way to approach it. And I did eventually come to the understanding that, as creatives, we can learn so much from that kind of examination but I also don’t think we need to do it all the time. I mean, there is some work we may want to just enjoy for what it is.

It can be the same in regard to how you approach intention. You might just want to enjoy the creative process and let your fingers and mind take the designs where they will. That’s great, especially if you are doing the work primarily because you enjoy the process. In that case, intellectualizing your intention can take away from that visceral experience but I will still argue that you need something to guide your design choices , even in a general way, if you want to arrive at the end of that process with a well-designed and engaging piece. Alternately, fully understanding your intention and planning out the details of a piece will allow you to boldly move forward as you work but you may also want to allow for modifications as your ideas and construction may change as you work.

Celie Fago may have a penchant for some pretty intense planning if this sketchbook page is any indication. She shared this with Dan Cormier for the Broken Telephone project article published in the Fall 2013 issue of The Polymer Arts (available in digital if you want to grab a copy here.) The objective was to create a brooch inspired by another artist’s piece that was sent to her. Her notes start off with “What Do I Hear? (when listening to Dave’s piece),” followed by a list of descriptive words as a way to search for her intention. That leads her into an exploration of design possibilities that support that intention. (Click image for a larger version.)

So, I think the best way to think of intention is in degrees of awareness. You can be fully aware of your intention and be able to verbalize it in detail, you can access your intuition with a more general idea driving your choices, or it can be somewhere in between.

I think the most important thing is that you make all of your individual design choices purposefully whether or not you fully understand your reasons. (I mean, I have no idea what I like caramel gelato so much but the lack of understanding certainly isn’t going to stop me from enjoying it!) Just try not to allow your design choices to be decided for you. Like don’t just default to a smooth surface because that’s how your clay comes out of the pasta machine. Choose a smooth surface because that is what best supports your intention. Purposefully choose shapes that support the concept you are inspired by rather than determining them based on your available cutters or because organic shapes are easiest to create freeform. Pick colors based on symbolic or emotive qualities not just what you have on hand. And ask yourself, every time, whether your piece will benefit from lines or marks or if there shouldn’t be any so you don’t miss out those possibilities.

These kinds of purposeful decisions will show a controlled and skilled intention, creating depth and cohesiveness and, likely, a lot more satisfaction on your end as well as in your finished pieces.

 

Dare I Say Winds Are Changing (in the Right) Direction

Yes, I’d hoped to do a midweek blog last week with some more examples about how to look at color and pick contrast and similarities, but not only did I have a busy week taking care of my husband after his biking accident (he is healing amazingly well and quickly, thank you all for asking!), I also had the opportunity to bring a staff member back on board so I’ve been getting her up to speed and we start work on possible new projects this coming week. It’s going to be so nice not doing this solo!

Also, you all really took advantage of the Damage Sale! I am nearly cleared out although, as I write this, there is still a small handful of slightly imperfect publications on the Specials page if you want to grab up those last $4 magazines and $12 books.

Then I got so excited about how cleared out the shipping room was looking (I’ll need the room to bring in new publications!) that I added a 25% off sale through September 15 on all regular print publications. No coupon code is needed if you want to take advantage of that. Just go over to the website.

So, there has been a ton of packing and shipping this week which not only kept me busy, it also made me more aware of an issue I’m having with my bad right arm. It’s kind of worked into my shoulder. But I saw a new orthopedic doctor and he had some wonderfully encouraging things to say so this coming week I start a new and different regimen of physical therapy that he believes will actually heal my arm. I am reservedly hopeful!

So, I’m busy but relatively happy over here. I hope to have some concrete new project announcements after this coming week. It’s been such an aimless, up in the air kind of year for us all, hasn’t it? I look forward to having a production schedule of some sort to keep me feeling relevant and to keep you inspired. So, keep fingers crossed!

I hope all of you have had your own dose of good news, light at the end of the tunnel, or other positive developments. I’m sure we could all use a bit more of that right now. So, keep an eye on impacts for incoming upcoming newsletters and announcements. In the meantime, take good care of you and yours!

Color Scheming

August 23, 2020

Noelia Contreras, stretches the idea of analogous color schemes by choosing pairs of colors that are in the same third of the color wheel then creating contrast by choosing tinted versions of one or both colors to create her stripes and spots.

As promised, this week we are going to start talking about creating color palettes. But first, because I love you all so much for following me as I blather about color and design, I want to make sure that you get in on the Damage Sale that is going on right now.

Damage Sale is on Now … and They’re Selling Fast!

Once every year or two, I pull out these boxes of publications that have been slightly damaged or marred and put them on sale, usually for 40-50% off. This time though, I marked it all down by 50-60%.

I started that yesterday and sold nearly half of them before lunch! Not wanting my blog readers to miss out, I went through my backstock boxes yesterday and pulled a number of imperfect copies that got shelf wear from storage so I’d have something to offer you.

Those got added to the sale inventory last night and so you all now have a fighting chance to grab some too. Just click here. But best be quick. It’s not quite toilet paper but I think there is a pandemic response thing going on here!

(If you got in on this Saturday but something was out of stock and is available now, buy it and I’ll combine the orders, refunding the difference in shipping if the order comes in by noon EST on Monday.)

 

Color Combo Considerations

Okay, now on to the business of color. Choosing colors to use in a piece takes into account quite a number of things but let’s hit on what I think are the three most important things to keep in mind:

Intention – What is your intention in creating the piece? What is the piece about? Go as far as writing it down and come up with some adjectives. Now, what colors go with those words and match your gut feeling about what you want this piece to be. I believe one should never ignore the gut but you do need to discern between instinct and taking the easy road or simply being dazzled by a color. That’s the hard part of using instinct but keep at it and hone it!

Importance – Should color play a major, supportive, or minor role in your design? I think this question is more important for color than for most design elements because we have such a strong and visceral reaction to color. There is usually a hierarchy of design elements in a piece and you benefit from intentionally deciding where color lands in that order. If you create a super tall vase, size is probably the major player in your design so do you want to draw attention away from that by making it a rainbow of bright colors? You absolutely might want to, but the size can make the colors even louder, which is great if that’s what you are after. However, if you want to focus on size because you want people to feel how monumental the piece is, one or two analogous colors in a supportive role might better support your intention.

Susan Dyer’s work puts color at the top of her design hierarchy with lots of contrast in hue and value but not a lot of contrast in saturation, going for bright and playful in most of her pieces like the one here.

Contrast – What level of contrast does your piece call for? High contrast creates high energy, low contrast creates calm, while something in between can be comfortable but still energized. Levels of contrast in a color palette can be created between color values (light versus dark), saturation (bright versus toned down), hues (complimentary colors), temperature (warm versus cool), and relative quantity (how much each color is used versus the others.)

Like everything else, how much contrast you choose should fulfill your intention but also, high or low contrast can be chosen to balance the energy of the work as needed. For example, you might have a busy piece with a variety of shapes and lines plus a lot of marks fulfilling your intention to create high energy but if you don’t want it too chaotic, you might use low rather than high contrast colors. Some intentional restraint in contrast will make the energy of the other elements feel more grounded. Alternately, you could go high contrast on the colors but go less busy on other design elements, especially if you deem color to be of high importance to the piece and don’t want it to be overlooked.

This necklace from Sandra Trachsel has low hue contrast using an analogous color scheme of yellow-green to blue-green but has value contrast between the two to give it a subtle energy but enough punch to really highlight the dimension of the interlocking geometric forms.

Okay, so, yeah, those are quite conceptual points and are very important to keep in mind when choosing a color palette but now, how do you even begin choosing colors? There are actually so many ways you can approach choosing colors for a piece and once you work with color intentionally and intelligently for a while, you will find your own way. But this week and next, I’m going to make some suggestions to get you started. Here is the first for this week.

 

Go with Your Gut

It’s going to sound like I’m saying this quite blithely but I’m serious about this – the most common way to start choosing colors is to go with your gut. Yeah, as mentioned, it may be something you have to hone but your instincts are really a great place to start and will help make your work truly your own. Now, you may think you have no instincts about color but we all do. We all react to color so the connections you make to color are in there and those connections are exactly what you need to find the colors you need for your work.

So, you can think about your intentions and see what colors come to mind or you can, with your intentions or associated adjectives running through your brain like a little chant, start shuffling through your colored art materials, a collection of color cards if you have them, or browse about online. Find yourself a base color to work off of. It doesn’t have to be the exact color yet but think of it as an anchor point for the time being.

Once you have that, you can start adding in other colors based on one of the following color wheel schemes. Keep in mind, this is not math. You don’t have to be exact in these color schemes. Think of them as templates that give you an idea of what colors to pair up with your anchor color.

You’re going to recognize a few these terms from the post on color relationships if you read that one. Those relationships for color mixing are also great starting points for choosing color palettes but I’m going to add a few more possible color combinations to your repertoire today.

 

Complementary – This color scheme involves focusing primarily on two colors, ones that are opposite each other on the color wheel. It provides great color contrast but, sometimes, these combinations create an almost uncomfortable tension. Fully saturated complements, when butted up against each other, will even cause a visual buzzing where they meet. Again, the tension between the complements is not a bad thing if that is what you are after but, because of this, this kind of color scheme should be carefully and quite intentionally chosen.

 

Analogous – this involves choosing colors that are near each other on the color wheel. These are usually two to four key hues so although you’re limiting yourself to one section of the color wheel you can still have quite the range.

Combining colors that are near each other on the color wheel creates palettes with low hue contrast and low or moderate value contrast, at least between the key hues themselves. If you choose colors that are desaturated (have reduced purity) due to tinting, shading, or toning of the color, that can increase the value contrast between analogous colors. So, you could create in blues and greens but go for a dark blue and a bright green so color value and saturation will be contrasted but since there analogous it will be relatively subtle. That’s why analogous color schemes are often found in moderate to low energy designs.

 

Triad or Square – I put these together because they are simply choosing a set of colors that are equidistant from each other on the color wheel. In a triad you are choosing three and a square you are choosing four colors. These create quite colorful and moderately high contrasting hue schemes. These color palettes tend to work best if one color is dominant (like your anchor color that you started off with) while the others play supporting roles in the color scheme.

 

Split Complementary – This can be a combination of two colors although I think it is best used as a three-color scheme. Here you choose one color and combine it with one or both colors to the side of the color’s true complement.

The TMA website scheme is yellow-green with its split complements magenta and blue (both leaning towards its true complement violet but still no visual tension.)

These create beautiful, high contrast color schemes but without the tension that direct complements can create. The combination remains lively and high in hue contrast but it feels much more refined than direct complements, triads, or squares. This is because you actually have a pair of basically analogous colors set against a high contrast one but not with high-tension contrasting hues. It’s kind of the best parts of all the previously mentioned schemes.

 

Monochromatic – The term monochromatic itself is synonymous with boring, I know, but this color scheme is anything but that. You may have just one base color but you then create a variety of shades, tints, and maybe even some tones of that one hue. Although it lacks hue contrast, you still get to play with saturation and value contrast so you can scale your energy level up and down with great control. I personally don’t think there is any other color scheme quite so sophisticated and clean as a monochromatic one so if your design is primarily about refinement, this color scheme should be seriously considered.

 

So, now you have one, somewhat structured way to start choosing colors. I would suggest this week that you play around with the various color schemes above. It could be as simple as pulling out your art materials and shuffling colors around on your tabletop to find complementary, analogous, triadic, and split complementary color schemes or continue practicing your color mixing by at least mixing up one luscious monochromatic scheme. Go with your gut and play with the colors as you feel you need to.

 

Not Much to Say

I know, I usually catch you up with what’s going on with me at this point, but it’s been a rough and tiring week for a variety of reasons and I am a bit talked out. I’ll tell you about drowning my sorrows in my minvan camper conversions project at a later date, okay?

I’ll just leave you pondering classic color combinations for now but next week we’ll going to get into some slightly more advanced ways of choosing color. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too difficult and you have all the tools to do it. In fact, I think a lot of you will be quite surprised at how easy and fun it will be. All this color study has been great fun, hasn’t it? I do hope so!

 

So, enjoy your week and fill it full of color!

The Keys to Color

June 28, 2020

Lampwork beads by Pikalda Phuengpong

Have you noticed that, in art, very few things exist or are created in a vacuum? In other words, every choice you make has an effect on all the other choices you have made or will make when designing and creating original works of art. So, if you are coming to my blog for the first time, you may want to read the last three weeks of posts first because each successive article builds off the last.

Last week we talked about color value and this week we’re going to talk about how you can change the value along with something called saturation. This will be a little heavy on terminology but it’s easy stuff and by the time you’re done reading, you will have quite the sophisticated color vocabulary.

I also want to speak for just a moment on the reason you would want to do this deep dive into color and design. Whether you create your own colors or simply choose colors from pre-mixed options, your choices are best ruled by your understanding of the characteristics of color. Of course, understanding color characteristics is essential in color mixing but choosing and identifying color requires the same knowledge especially when creating color palettes, analyzing your work (or the work of others), and correcting or improving your color choices.

Working with color, like anything else in design, is about the relationship between colors and between all the design elements. In design, we work with likeness and disparity. That’s really what all relationships are about, aren’t they? Think about your spouse or your best friend or the coworkers you like to hang around with. You have something in common, some area of your life that overlaps that you can share. But you also have differences. These differences make the relationship interesting, encourages curiosity and conversation, and allows each of you to fulfill different roles in the relationship. That’s how design works as well, including between colors.

So, if you keep in mind that these conversations are about those design relationships, I think you’ll start to see just how useful and essential these immersive color lessons are regardless of whether you makes your own colors, pick available colors, or simply want a better understanding of the art that you enjoy.

Saturation is Not Value

Now, let’s talk about value versus saturation. For some reason, these two concepts get confused a lot even though they are quite different. As you learned last week, value is the lightness or darkness of a color. Saturation, however, is about how intense the color is or how close it is to the unadulterated hue or “key” color, at least in regard to pigment. (This is dealt with a little bit differently when it comes to mixing light in RGB. Just thought you ought to know that in case you come across a definition that talks about saturation, brightness, and luminosity. That’s RGB stuff.)

 

So, let’s take a pure blue as an example of both high saturation and dark value. Take a look at the color wheel. True blue, in its most saturated and vivid form there on the outside ring of the color wheel, is far darker than pure yellow. You could make that blue as light in value as yellow by adding a lot of white to it but that would also change its saturation because the addition of white takes away from the purity of the hue, right? The addition of white in a color is called tint.

Now let’s take that yellow. If you wanted it to be as dark in value as the blue, you could add a lot of black, so much so that it would probably look gray with little yellow to be gleaned. This would both darken the value and desaturate it, a lot. The addition of black to a color is known as shade.

So that’s the thing with adding black or white to a color. It will desaturate a color but it also will make it lighter or darker in value. I bet that doesn’t fully clarify why value and saturation are so different since adding white or black changes the lightness or darkness (value) as well as the intensity of a color (saturation). Well, here’s the thing – you can, on the other hand, change the saturation without changing the value, just not with black or white.

Let’s look at the color red for moment. On the CMY color wheel, you can see that opposite red is cyan. They look to be about the same midrange color value, right? If you add a bit of cyan to the red that will reduce the saturation or purity of the red by altering its hue but it will not make a noticeable change to its value. If you got yourself one of those CMY color wheels, you’ll see on the front side there that each ring getting closer to the center shows what happens when you add 10%, 20%, 30%, or 40% of each hue’s complementary color. That kind of mix tones down the color which is why it is called a tone.

You can also tone down a color without changing its value by adding a gray that is the same value as the color. In fact, a fully desaturated color would be just gray. Or you can mix in a lighter or darker gray to make the color lighter or darker while toning it down but without muddying the key with its complement. A gray mixed with a color is also called tone.

So, you see, changing saturation can, but does not always, change value but changing the value will necessarily change the saturation of a hue, making it less pure. This is true for color mixing or even using digital photo editing (and is why I warned you last week not to use saturation options in photo editing to look at values in grayscale, because value is not taken into account.)

 

Your Bright, New, Shiny Color Vocabulary

Congratulations! You probably didn’t realize it but you just completed a major step in your color education. If you’ve read all the posts, you have learned (or refreshed your understanding of) the three most important aspects of color – Hue, Value, and Saturation.

And, now, with this article, you’ve come to know the three primary ways to change a color. Let’s review because it’s kind of cool to realize how much you’ve soaked up.

The three primary characteristics of color:

Hue – the key and name of a color.

Value – the lightness or darkness of a color.

Saturation – how pure or how adulterated a color is due to the addition of white, black, gray or a complementary color.

The three primary ways of adjusting color in pigments:

Tint – the addition of white to a color.

Shade – the addition of black to a color.

Tone – the addition of gray or a complementary hue to a color.

Look at that! You have six color terms that are going to help you tremendously in color mixing, choosing palettes, and analyzing work. But let’s spend a little more time with those last three just to be sure you got them well seated in your creative little brains.

 

Color Quiz

Okay, let’s put your new knowledge to the test. Take a look at the opening image and the images below and find the pure hue (just visually – you don’t have to name it) and then determine the variation of that hue was accomplished with tints, shades, and/or tone. We’ll chat about them after you have a chance to come up with your own thoughts.

Carved wooden vessel by Louise Hibbert

 

A polymer bracelet by Judy Belcher.

 

Well, what did you come up with? Some of these examples are not so straightforward but I find them very interesting.

First of all, Pikalda’s glass beads that open this post have a saturated blue as its key color while the other color variations, aside from the black and white accents, are the key blue with white added so they are tinted versions of the key color. Pretty easy to see that, right?

With Louise Hibbert’s wooden vessel, the key is a kind of violet and, I’m sure you guessed it, the gradation to the nearly black tips is the result of adding black, in other words, creating shades of the hue. But there are also diluted versions of the hue where she lets the wood show through towards the center. Is that a tint because it makes it lighter or a tone becuase it isn’t quite white that has been added?

Well, think in terms of the color elements here. Since the violet color is translucent, it visually mixes with the color of the wood, a pale cream, which is a tint of yellow. This actually makes that diluted violet a tone because the change in color is not due to the addition of just white or just black and it’s a color that muddies the key color even if just a little. It’s true that yellow is not the direct complement of violet – that would be a yellow-green – but you can actually tone down a color with something close to its complement too. We’ll get more into those complexities when we get deeper into color mixing so you can just stash that info away for later if you like.

Now, in Judy Belcher’s bracelet, it gets even a bit more complicated because, in truth, the fully saturated hue is not present. That would be bright lime green but the key color has been toned down with variations of gray. In fact, the entire bracelet is a series of lime green tones with nothng else but some white. Some tones are due to a very light gray addition, others to a few different middle grays and the darkest green would be a tone with a dark gray. Being able to spot the key in something like this takes practice but not a lot. It might just take the following little exercises.

 

For Further Study

Okay, so there are a couple ways you can further concrete your, hopefully, not too hard-earned knowledge. These are both fun and easy and take 10-15 minutes each to do.

Color Wheel Studies

First of all, if you bought yourself that CMY color wheel I suggested – or even if you didn’t – you can see tones, tints and shades set up on this handy color tool with approximate percentages that one would mix to achieve these colors from a key. Here is a video that the Color Wheel Company put together to explain how to use their color wheel tool while making note of where these items are on it so you can familiarize yourself with them just by looking over your color wheel. Clicking on the image takes you to the purchase page but scroll down to find the videos.

Isn’t crazy just how much information they put on this little paper tool? Keep in mind that those percentages for the tones, tints and shades are approximate because in the real world, our materials have varying amounts of pigment so adding 10% of one complement to a color could make a dramatic change while adding 10% of a complement to another color may make almost no change. You’ll start to get a sense of the stronger and weaker colors (and brands) if you do the exercise below and as we work through color mixing in July.

 

Mix it Up

Studying the color wheel is an easy and quick way to see the difference between tone, tint, and shade but the best way to not only remember the terminology and what it means but to really understand how saturation, tint, shade, and tone work in color is to mix it up.

So, grab some clay in one fully saturated key color. Pick your favorite or grab one of the primaries – cyan, magenta, or yellow. You also need a bit of your chosen color’s complement plus black and white. Roll out each clay on your thickest pasta machine setting and, using a single punch cutter, punch out portions of clay from each sheet. (You can also do this with paint – you won’t be “punching” out your portions but, instead, you’ll be picking up dabs of paint.)

  1. At the top of a piece of paper, write Tint, Shade, Complement Tone, and Gray Tone as column headers
  2. Put one portion of your key color under each column header. This will be a starting point for each color as we desaturate it.
  3. Punch out two portions of your key color and mix it with two portions of white until well mixed. Sheet the clay and punch out one portion of this mix. Put it under the tint column with space enough between it and the key color for another portion.
  4. Take one of those mixed portions and one of the key color and mix that. Punch a portion out of this new mix and place it between the previous mix and the key color.
  5. Take the last portion of the first mix and mix it with a portion of white. Punch out a portion of this very light mix and line it up in the column under the middle mix, followed by a portion of whites to complete a column of tints from key color to white.

At this point you have three desaturated tint versions of the key color. These are not a lot of steps between the key color and white but it will give you an idea of what white does to a fully saturated color. If you are game before creating a wider range of this tint sampler, you can double the amount for each of the three mixes we just did so you can mix additional portions and create four more steps, one between each of the five portions in the tint column.

  1. Now go through the exact same process, creating 3 or 7 mixes, as you prefer, but instead of white …
    1. … make a column using black to build a range under the Shade header. You may want to use 2-3 times as much key color as black for your middle shade to get a better gradation since black is very strong, as you can see in my example. I used twice as much key color and all the mixes are still awfully dark.
    2. … use the complementary color to create a range under the Complementary Tone column.
    3. … mix a gray (I used twice as much white as black to get my middle gray) to add to the key color to create a range under the Gray Tone column.

You will probably notice, as you mix, that sometimes the progression from the key color to the color you mix in is not very even or regular. For instance, if your key color is particularly dark in value such as the Ultramarine blue, the jump between the last mix and white may seem quite a bit different, like it could use another mix in between. You are, of course, welcome to change up the portions of color in your mixes to make a more regularly graduated range. This will, however, demonstrate that the amount of pigment in different colors of clay and between brands can differ and so some colors will dominate in a mix. You’ll need to use more of the weaker color to make the range gradations more even. But making a perfectly graduated range is not the purpose of this exercise. The idea is that you make the mixes, see the changes in color, and associated with the terminology.

Now why am I so adamant about you learning the terminology? Well, in July, as we learn about color mixing and palette choices, being able to verbalize the common and contrasting characteristics in a set of colors will be key to making beautiful, intentional color choices. Plus, you can impress friends, family, and complete strangers with sophisticated color banter!

So, relax and mix up some colors. It’s easy and often surprising how the colors come out. I have found more than one “new favorite color” doing these kinds of exercises. You just might find a inspiring new color or two as well!

 

Wondering about my references to Intention? Or how to support this content?

If you enjoy these articles, you can help me keep the lights on by making a purchase of any of the publications I have on the Tenth Muse Arts website or by making a one-time or monthly contribution here.

Read the set of articles on Intention in the February edition of the Virtual Art Box or catch up on the concept of marks, lines, and shape with a purchase of one or more of the original Virtual Art Box offerings. They are all on SALE, 25% off right now – no promo code needed. I have also put all books on sale at 20% off for the next couple weeks so it’s a great time to fill up your library.

Your purchases help support this free content as well as giving you a stronger base for the conversations we will have going forward.

If your budget doesn’t allow such support, that’s perfectly okay. I just hope this is supporting your creative journey giving you more joy in your work. if it does, just let people know this is freely available so I can support even more folks.

 

My Weird Low Pressure Week

Hopefully there aren’t too many mistakes here. I need to beg your forgiveness if there are. My brain has literally been shorted as I gave blood this past week and got tested to see if I am a antibody plasma donor candidate to help out COVID-19 patients but my naturally very low blood pressue has yet to recover so I feel very dingy and am sometimes dizzy still, 5 days later. I never could give blood in Colorado due to the high elevation and even lower blood pressure up there but they thought I’d be fine down here. Well, guess not. We learn something new all the time!

So, I probably can’t give plasma eithere but I am still going to do all I can during this rough time to help others and, as part of that, maybe you will allow me to ask a little favor. I know this has gotten a little political here in the states but thsi is not about politics … I would just like to ask that when you are out, and it has been recommended where you live, you can show your love and concern for your community by the simple act of wearing a mask. I wear one everywhere even though I’ve already had this bug so I am supposedly immune and can’t pass it on. But people are scared and worried and wearing a mask shows you care, even if you question the validity of the science that says it will save others from getting sick. We need all the consideration and caring we can put out there right now, don’t you think?

Ok, that is my public service announcement for the day. I hope you are all staying well and will find joy in a creative and colorful week!

 

The Need for Light and Dark

 

Libby Mills uses value in color to create drama and depth with a mostly monochrome color palette.

I planned on talking about color variation this week but then it occurred to me, that we will need to talk about color contrast and you can’t talk about contrasting color without talking about value. So, I switched up my plans and we’re going to talk about the often neglected concept of color’s lights and darks, otherwise known as value.

The Light and Dark of It

So, what exactly is value? Value is simply what I just mentioned – the lightness or darkness of a color. This has nothing to do with their hue. Remember, hue works more like a category so mint green and hunter green both are a green hue, but mint has a light color value while hunter green has a very dark value.

The most important thing to remember about value is that it used to create contrast. For instance, purple has a much darker value than yellow, right? Used together, they are high in value contrast and, so, make a rather dramatic color palette. On the other hand, a dark magenta and forest green will have the same or similar middle-dark value. Putting them together will not create much value contrast. Although there is nothing wrong with that – they belong to complementary (opposite) hues on the CMY color wheel so they have contrast there – the lack of value contrast greatly reduces the potential of their dramatic contrast in hues.

To be blunt, similar values in rich colors such as dark magenta and forest green would just be boring. Now, if you choose a slightly darker magenta and a lighter green such as a burgundy and an jade, that will increase the value contrast and make a much more interesting color combination, as seen in the example image here. Below the color combinations you see them with the hue removed, leaving just their gray value. So that’s another way you can think about value – it’s the lightness or the darkness of the color without any color in it.

 

Seeing the Value

If you are a painter you might be shaking your head at the simplicity of the above explanation so let’s get a bit more precise. (If your head is already spinning a bit, just read through this but don’t worry about understanding it fully yet. You can come back to this later.)

Value is not just the lightness or darkness of a color. It is the lightness or darkness of what is SEEN. That’s an important distinction because the color of things we are looking at out in the world won’t stay constant as the light changes.

For instance, have you ever been around someone in a restaurant or on a train – some poorly lighted space – thinking their hair is dark brown only to see them step outside and find that it’s a rich red? Their hair didn’t change color. The light did.

The less light there is, the darker things appear, right? That seems obvious, but it’s really important to consciously understand that. It underlines one of the primary principles about creating art, especially imagery you’re trying to reproduce in any realistic manner – it’s not about what you think something is, it’s about what you actually see. So, if you are painting a portrait of me in a dark room, you would not paint me with the bright henna red and copper hair you know I have, because in the dim light, my hair would not actually look red or copper.

You may not be a painter but if you plan to build images in canes or are painting with polymer or create pretty much anything where you are developing a two-dimensional illusion of form and depth , you will be working with these kinds of value changes in color. Even if you don’t create imagery, the concept of how light changes the value of a color is useful for understanding what value is and why it is important in your designs.

You’ve actually learned about the importance of value if you’ve ever tried to draw a ball – to make it look round you have a very light spot where light hits the sphere directly, a dark side where the light doesn’t reach, and a gradation from light to dark between the two. Now, if that ball had color, like the blue ball you see here, you can tell that it’s a solid blue ball even though it actually has a variety of blues in this rendering of it. But I couldn’t just fill in a circle with one shade of blue and have you understand it is a ball. We need to see that change in color value – the swatches pulled from the blue ball are all the same hue of blue but are all different values – in order to see a dimensional form.

Without those changes of value – those lights and darks, those highlights and shadows – everything would just look flat. That is also why you don’t want to take a photo of an object with the light shining directly on the front facing view – it will kill the shadows, eliminate value changes, and make it difficult to perceive its form.

 

Intentional Value

So, a change in color value provides us with visual information, right? We like that. We like to be able to perceive if something is round or flat, textured or smooth. The contrast between light and shadow gives us that information. It is one of the reasons that we look for (mostly unconsciously) the contrast in value in works of art as well. Contrast, or the lack of it, can tell us a great deal.

In these beads by Jennifer Morris, there is very little contrast in value but these are not about drama so it makes sense. There are muted and pale colors with feminine floral motifs on round forms with low value contrast to match. The intention for this to be soft and quiet is obvious and with all the characteristics servicing that intention, she has designed some very lovely beads.

On the other hand, here are liquid polymer painted pieces by Lynn Yuhr who is clearly going for a bold and graphic look with wide ranging color values to support that objective.

So, don’t think that you must have a high contrast in the value of your colors. It can be high or low depending on what will best serve your intention. Value contrast also can bring attention to certain portions of your work or lead your eye around the piece.

For example, the fish on this clock by Gera Scott Chandler are much lighter in value than the background, bringing our focus to them first. The light value of the circles on the background subtly connect to the larger fish since they are similar in value so that your eye moves from fish to circles, going around the face of the clock.

 

Furthering Your Color Consciousness

So, before I get into how to manipulate values – something we will get into next week – I suggest you spend some time getting familiar with the values of color. I have a couple suggestions for you.

Go Grayscale

To better familiarize yourself with the actual value of colors, I find it helpful to look at colors in grayscale. A grayscale image will show you the actual value of colors, relative to the colors they are grouped with.

This means taking photos of your work in “black and white” mode or changing color images (yours or other people’s if you want) to grayscale in a photo editing app or software. Not all cameras have a black and white (or grayscale) mode. If you’re not sure, look up your camera model online along with “how to shoot black and white” and if no information comes up, then it probably doesn’t have that option.

The other way to do this is to edit the image. To do this on your computer, use Photoshop or whatever default photo editing software is available on your computer.

  • In standard Photoshop, go to Image> Mode> Grayscale.
  • In Microsoft Paint.net, you go to Adjustments> Black and White.
  • If you are using another program, search the web for “how to convert image to grayscale” along with the name of your editing program.*

If you take a picture with a mobile device, you can usually edit it to grayscale directly in the phone or tablet.

  • On an iPhone or iPad, select an image, hit “Edit”, tap the three overlapping circles icon, then scroll the little thumbnails of the photo over until it is in “mono”. Tap “Done” if you want to save it but keep in mind it will save over the original. If you do this accidentally, just follow the same steps and you’ll find the original version in that little row of thumbnails so you can convert it back.
  • In Android, and pretty much any mobile device, you can use Google photos. Open your image in this app, tap it to bring up the icons and choose the three stacked lines. Slide the thumbnails over until it is in “Vogue” mode. You can also save it and undo it later.

*Note: There are quite a number of articles online suggesting you convert an image to grayscale by using a “saturation” adjustment. DO NOT do that for this value exercise. As we will discuss next week, saturation has nothing to do with color value. Reducing saturation tends to also reduce value, more for some colors than others. It will completely mess you up. You need a conversion to “grayscale”, “black and white”, or “mono”.

If using software and apps is just too much of a bother or you don’t have a software program, here is a free online service. You just click the file icon, browse to and open the file, and it will appear in the browser window in grayscale. You can save it from there by hitting the floppy disk icon.

Once you have these grayscale images, start looking at how much value contrast shows in the images.

  • Is there a lot of contrast or all the values fairly close?
  • Does the amount of value contrast match with the probable intention or feel of the piece?
  • Do any of the colors set next to each other just blend into one another because the values are so close? If so, do you think that works for the piece or do you think more value contrast could help it? (We’ll talk more next week about how to choose alterantives when you want a different value.)

Just make yourself more familiar with value. You can also use this value scale (click on it, then print it out) to check values of colors or pieces you have. You can lay the scale next to a color and see which value you think is the closest. Then take a photo of the scale next to the color, convert it to grayscale, and see how close you came to matching the color to the right  value. Do this a few times and you’ll be seeing in values quite quickly!

 

Get a CMY Color Wheel

You know how I recommended you get a CMY color wheel? Well, the more I work on these articles, the more I wish you ALL had the CMY color wheel from the Color Wheel company. I can’t tell you how many times I reference mine, and I am convinced that when we get into how to use these color concepts to pick color palettes and to mix color, having this particular CMY color wheel will make it all such a breeze.

No, they’re not paying me to push this. I have met the owners and they are a fantastic little family company (who worked with the polymer community’s very own Maggie Maggio to help build a CMY based grade school art curriculum, by the way) but more than that, they are so intensely passionate about color and education. That’s why they’ve done such a superior job with this particular color wheel.

So, if you haven’t gotten one yet, you can buy it directly from the company for $9 (including shipping in the US) and you will have it within 5-7 business days. It’ll be the best $9 you ever invested for your creative journey. Outside the US, I am not sure where it is best to get them but you can search for “Color Wheel Co CMY” and look for this wheel:

https://colorwheelco.com/buy-now/product/cmy-primary-mixing-wheel-7-3-4-diameter/

 

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this immersive in value. I have to say I am always surprised at how much there is to talk about each characteristic of color. These articles really could be much shorter but I don’t know if you would walk away really understanding and feeling confident about these concepts. We retain concepts better when we spend some time with them. I’m hoping these articles do that for you! If you have any thoughts or suggestions about the length or detail of these articles, I am always up for hearing them. Just reply to this if you get it by email or write me through the website. 

 

Wondering about my references to Intention? Or how to support this content?

Read what so many VAB members have said was a life altering (or game changing or mind opening) set of articles on Intention in the February edition of the Virtual Art Box and catch up on the concept of marks, lines, and shape too. And they are all on SALE, 25% off right now – no promo code needed. I’m also having a 20% off sale on ALL books!

The purchase of a box would help support this free content that I am creating now as well as give you a stronger base for the conversations we will be having going forward. You can help me keep the lights on by making a purchase of any of the publications I have on the Tenth Muse Arts website or by making a one-time or monthly contribution here.

Thank you for your past, present, and future support!

Connected to Color

June 14, 2020

Cornelia Brockstedt communicates her sense of each season through color sets (cones and the cord) that speak to her idea of Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.

So, here we go with the second installment of this summer’s color adventure. If you didn’t read last week’s posts, you can find it here. That post really lays the foundation for a lot of what I’ll be talking about over the next few weeks so you might want to read or review that first.

This week I want to expand upon your knowledge of hues but, more particularly I want to talk about the expressive nature of color. I know last week I may have forced a shift in your thinking about primaries but to confirm that and as a way to connect last week’s post with this one, let’s ride this CMY train a bit farther down the tracks.

Hopefully, we are now all in agreement that the most accurate pigment based primary colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. That is particularly helpful to keep in mind when mixing but that hardly gives us enough categories to work from in order to have a sense of how colors communicates or how to choose color palettes. I would like you to add a few more, starting with the CMY secondaries – the colors that result from mixing two primaries together – red, green, and blue.

Hmm. RGB, you say? Doesn’t that sound familiar? If you remember from last week, RGB are the primary colors for mixing light (such as the light that creates images on any digital screen.) Yes, CMY’s secondaries are the primary colors used to mix with light. And the reverse is true – CMY is the secondary color set for RGB. Why do you think they are interrelated like that?

You may remember from last week’s post that RGB is considered an additive color while CMY is subtractive so it’s not surprising to find them as opposite sets on the same color wheel. This is not the same RYB color wheel that painters have been using for years, mind you, so if you have a color wheel that depends on bread, yellow, blue, you might want to either get a CMY color wheel like this one by the Color Wheel Company. Or use a CMY color diagram like this one below. (Note that colors in this image below will shift if you print it and may be off due to your display already. Also the percentages listed are just guidelines when mixing colors as quality and concentration of pigments between types of materials and brands can differ greatly.)

Click for full size and to print. Created by SW Pryor, 2009

 

Back to color categories. Right now, you have six – cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, and blue. How about we add four more for a nice even 10?

Since the majority of the art world has been working with red, yellow, and blue as primaries for the last 200 years, their secondary hues have been widely referred to in color psychology and communication. Those are green (which we already have), purple and orange. Purple and orange carry very particular associations so we can’t leave them out.

The other two I feel necessary to include are black and white. For the sake of simplicity, I’m not going to wander into the mire that is the argument about whether these are actually colors. I think that argument is really based in the one inarguable fact – they aren’t hues. Depending on the color mode, either black or white is the inclusion of all hues or the exclusion of all hues but the argument on whether they are colors is just semantics so for our purposes I am proclaiming them color categories.

 

Connecting in Color

Now, why is it important to have categories? Well, you have to realize you’re going to be communicating something specific with the colors you choose so it’s best to choose with intention. Having color categories and knowing their specific association gives you a base from which to begin making those kinds of decisions.

We all react to color on some level, so color choices are no small thing. For instance, if there are a set of sisters who are triplets, all dressed the same but one has fire engine red fingernails another cobalt blue fingernails and the third has sunshine yellow, do you not draw different conclusions about each of the women? The one with a red nails might come across as strong but conservative, the one with the blue may strike you as audacious or even rebellious, and the sister with yellow nails may seem carefree and funky. You might draw a different conclusion that I did but I’m guessing we’d agree that we would think of each of those women at least a little differently based solely on the fingernail color.

Strangely, those conclusions I made about the fingernail colors are not necessarily associations common with those specific colors but that’s our curveball here. It goes to show that it’s not just the color that creates what you are communicating – it’s also the context. And you.

Since there is a lot more to communicating with color than what we might assume is inherent in each hue, I’m going to give you very general associations as a kind of jumping off point, but you may very well have other strong associations not listed for these colors. We’ll get to that in a moment.

For now, simply read through this list but don’t try to memorize it. Just let it sink in as you read it, maybe just asking yourself what associations are true for you that I have listed, and mentally (or in writing) adding your own as you go. Then I have some thoughts about how to use these categories for your own authentic creations.

 

Color Associations by Color Category

Here are the color categories we’ll work on for now. We’ll get to the grayed out sections later.

 

Magenta – uplifting, balancing, and cheerful, this color can convey and encourage happiness, creativity, and compassion.

Purple – often thought of as the color of luxury and grandeur due to its historical rarity, it is now also associated with drama, ambition, and dignity. Purple also encourages daydreaming which may be why it is associated with mysticism and imagination.

Blue – one of the most liked colors in the world, blues can feel uplifting, quiet, calm, and reliable, as well as communicating trustworthiness and comfort.

Cyan – lively but calming, cyan invokes the serenity and brightness of tropical oceans along with a sense of cleanliness and focus.

Green – relaxing and reassuring, green is a very positive color that is easy on the eye, literally. It lessens glare and absorbs ultraviolet light reducing eye fatigue. It also represents growth, freshness, nature, and harmony although in certain contexts and tones it can also be associated with illness.

Yellow – considered the happiest of colors this is associated with joy, optimism, and spontaneity. It is visually dominant which means it can drown out other colors, so it is often used in small amounts or as a background color.

Orange – energizing, cheerful, and friendly, orange literally wakes us up by encouraging oxygen intake in the brain. It is also highly visible which is why it is used for construction and warning signs even though emotionally it feels playful.

Red – well-known as representing love, passion, power, and excitement, it is also associated with danger and blood. It also appears hot so much so that a beverage will seem hotter in a red cup than any other color. It is also the most eye-catching, so it gets noticed regardless of how little is used.

Black – is often associated with death but in the absence of a context with death associated symbols and imagery, it will more likely convey authority, respect, seriousness, and decorum while sometimes feeling aggressive. It can make objects appear deeper or heavier than light or white versions.

White – purity, cleanliness, goodness, and innocence are the more common associations with white although it can also be thought of as formal, cold, sterile, and stark. When it is not a dominant color, it is overlooked, reading as an inconspicuous background.

Now, you might be asking, what about brown? Or gray? How about pink? Yes, we do have very specific associations with those colors, but they are variations on hues, not hues themselves and I am aiming to give you baby steps, more or less. Trying to figure out how you feel about 10 colors is a pretty big baby step already. We’ll get to the rest in future weeks.

 

Real and Authentic Color

Okay, now that I you’ve read that list, let’s talk about the only color associations that really matters – your specific emotional connection to color.

Choosing the colors you want to use to communicate your intention really should be based on what you feel, not what you THINK, about those colors. This can be tough to figure out but if you’re up for it that’s what I’ll suggest you work on this week. Let me explain.

Take the color blue. It supposed to be calming, peaceful, and trustworthy and is one of the favorite colors of all times. Well, strangely, I myself have a kind of aversion to the hue of blue. It’s not all blues, but I certainly steer away from it when it comes to my attire. Other than maybe a pair of blue jeans on a back shelf, there is no blue in my closet. I know I associate dark blue clothing with domineering personalities (my father wore a lot of navy, for instance) so I don’t find it comforting or uplifting like many people might.

So, if I wanted to create a piece that portrayed a peaceful calm, I would not choose blue even though that is supposed to readily communicate that concept to others. It would be like trying to laugh at something I didn’t find funny. It will come across as inauthentic. However, I might go with green or even cyan as a dominant color because those colors do feel peaceful to me. That choice, combined with my other design choices, all rooted in my personal intention to convey a peaceful calm, should result in a cohesive and authentic feeling piece.

I know you might be concerned that choices based on your personal associations won’t communicate well to a lot of people. It is true – it might not. But for the right people, the people that will love and feel connected to the authentic you they see in your work, it absolutely will. It will also be a more joyful and satisfying piece to create for you.

 

Connection and Context

You might’ve noticed my persistent use of the word “connection”. I’m using this as a kind of catch all term for the various objectives an artist might have for drawing people to their work. Sometimes we want people to feel drawn to, and therefore connected to, the work on a personal level so that they want to buy it. Or we may be more concerned about captivating them in order to elicit a specific emotion or to get them to think, which is another kind of connection.

You can also have the objective of not trying to connect to others at all but may simply want to please yourself, which is wonderful and more than valid. In that case, it is even more important to make design choices based on how they make you feel than about what they mean to others. Even though you’re communicating with only yourself initially, the authenticity of your choices will communicate and connect to others if and when you share your work. Personally, I think this is the best way to work.

If you haven’t already noticed, everything in design is about relationships. Although the relationship between your artwork and the viewer is one relationship, I am more specifically referring to how every design element is related to each other in a piece to create an overall feel or message. Your choice of color, as strong as it can be in relaying a specific message on its own, relates to the other design elements which can change how the color and the overall design feels.

Look at these two pendants by Melanie Muir. They are using essentially the same color palette, but they have a notably different feel. For those of you who were with me last month, or bought the May VAB about shape, you might have readily recognized how the softer, round shapes of the left pendant has helped create an inviting and fun feel in that pendant. Yes, orange is associated with a sense of joy to start with but then look at the one on the right. It still has a burnt orange with black and white palette but the sharp corners of those shapes make it feel more serious although still lively due to the orange.

 

Here is another comparison with two different color palettes but the same design by Christine Dumont. Do they not feel quite different? Even though I like the core design, I am more drawn to the blue-green (yes, even though I am not big on blue.) I am a huge fan of green and I don’t think of domineering men when blue is combined with it. It actually feels uplifting and comfortable to me. The magenta, a color known to be particularly cheerful, is quite elegant here but feels too loud for me. That’s probably because I am essentially an introvert so although I like my attire to be creative, edgy, and even weird, I don’t like it to be loud.

Which do you prefer and why do you think that is?

 

 

Exploring Your Version of Hues

So, if I haven’t fully confused you by giving you a set of rules and then telling you to toss them out window, I would suggest that, this week, you spend time investigating how you feel about particular colors.

Now, how do you figure that out? Well, honestly, it’s going to take a lot longer than a week for most people if you’ve not done this before, but you can start by simply making word associations and becoming more aware of your reaction to color.

Wrapped in Color Exercises

Try to put yourself in a place, physically or mentally, where you can respond to color that surrounds you.

Go and put on different colors of clothing, wrap yourself in various colored blankets, or, if you have a stash of fabric, pull out some solid colored bits and wrap yourself up in them. Then ask yourself how you feel in each color, especially if you can do this in front of a mirror (you know, when everybody else is out for a walk or asleep or something so you don’t have to explain yourself.) What colors make you feel more energized? What colors make you feel more relaxed? Do any of them make you particularly happy or make you feel regal?

Since you are likely to be wrapping yourself up with colors that are not a pure hue, you could start making note of how you react to the hues when they are dark, pastel, bright, or muted. You may be responding to that version of the hue, not the hue itself. Like I might feel very bold and confident in a plum dress, but I would probably feel a bit subdued and delicate in a lavender one. (More on color variations next week.)

If you don’t have sufficient colors to wrap yourself up in, just try to imagine yourself in a room painted all in one hue. How do you feel in the yellow room? Does it make you want to dance around or is it annoying? How about a red room? Does it make you feel impassioned and energized or maybe frightened? How about a white room? How about a black room?

You aren’t really trying to make any specific conclusions about your relationship with color at this time. Just try and become more familiar with how you feel about various colors. Color relationships are complex. Like I love using copper polymer when making jewelry, but I can’t imagine ever creating anything with orange. Orange just doesn’t speak to the things I want to express. But you should know, I also hate tomatoes but love salsa so, I’m probably just particularly weird.

As we work through the various aspects of color over the next few weeks, you can continue to ask yourself these questions about how you feel about particular colors. And when you are designing, you could also ask yourself what color comes to mind when thinking about the emotion associated with the specific intention of the piece you’re working on. You might be surprised with what you come up with.

 

Wondering about my references to Intention? Or how to support this content?

Read what so many VAB members have said was a life altering (or game changing or mind opening) set of articles on Intention in the February edition of the Virtual Art Box and catch up on the concept of marks, lines, and shape too. And they are all on SALE, 25% off right now – no promo code needed.

The purchase of a box would help support this free content that I am creating now as well as give you a stronger base for the conversations we will be having going forward.

If you enjoy these articles, you can help me keep the lights on by making a purchase of any of the publications I have on the Tenth Muse Arts website or by making a one-time or monthly contribution here.

If your budget doesn’t allow such support, that’s perfectly okay. I just hope this is supporting your creative journey giving you more joy in your work. if it does, just let people know this is freely available so I can support even more folks.

Changing Forms

Table by Alice Stroppel – www.polymerclayetc.com

So, have my suggestions thus far this month triggered any new ideas for fresh and exploratory directions in the studio? Well, if it hasn’t yet maybe it will this week. Even if this month’s ideas did have you looking into some previously uncharted territories, my theme today can work in conjunction with new materials, big new projects, and collaborations as well.

But first, at quick note … have you signed up for the new Virtual Art Box coming out next weekend? I do hope you plan to join us if you haven’t already. Not only will you get great material to keep you inspired and keep that creative wheel in your head turning all month long, I have a couple specials just for my art boxers including a freebie and deep discounts. 

I’ll be drumming up such specials from polymer and mixed media craft resources every month, most will be worth much more than you are paying for the art box itself. Plus, for just another week, you can get in on a forever lifetime discount, just because you jumped in both feet first with me on this new adventure!

Ok, back to pushing ourselves, or at least thinking about it, this month.

I was thinking that a really stimulating challenge would be to work in a form that you have not worked in before. You know, like if you normally do jewelry, try decorative arts or sculpture. If you do wall art try your hand at jewelry. But knowing most of you, you’ve probably dabbled in a quite a few different forms. So, I think we need to look at some unusual territories within various art forms you’ve already tried.

For instance, if you work in jewelry or other adornment, consider what types you haven’t tried creating. Hair adornments, perhaps? Ankle bracelets? Gauge earrings instead of pierced? Tiaras perhaps? How about lapel pins, cufflinks, tie bars, or bolo ties? Or just men adornment in general?

If you create or cover a lot of home decor, move beyond the vases and switch plates and look around for other hapless home victims like ceiling fixture pulls, trashcan lids, lampstands, or the finials on the ends of drapery rods. Really, nothing should be safe from your decorative touches.

I could probably make an insanely long list of oddball things that could either be made with their covered with polymer, but let’s just look at what a few people have done with some less than common forms and see if these pieces can’t push your ideas about what you can do with polymer clay.

Strange Polymer in a Strange Land

when sitting down to write this, I wandered around the house looking for things I thought could be made with polymer, but I hadn’t seen much of. It is actually kind of hard. I see a lot. But how about this– incense burners? Maybe people don’t burn incense quite as much as they used to and perhaps that’s why we don’t see people making them in polymer clay but, on the other hand, they’re so easy to make and you have a really wide range of possible shapes they could take. You would think a few people would be regularly popping some out. But they are hard to find.

For an incense burner, all you need is a stable form with a snug hole big enough for the incense sick to stand in and, preferably, a platform to catch the ashes. You can have incense stick standing straight up or have a long tray the stick would hang over or you can ignore the tray component completely. That should be easy, right? I do wonder if people hesitate to make incense burners with polymer because they believe the hot embers will singe the clay. I very much doubt that would happen, especially if you create a straight up stand type, where the ashes have a long way to fall. Here is one example of an incense burner created with cane petals by Israel’s Marcia of Mars Design. It’s a straightforward construction and a pretty, as well as functional, little piece

You should check out her dreidels as well. I’m not sure Marcia is working in polymer anymore, or at least she’s not posting, but she did have a lot of fun ideas you can find on her Flickr photo stream.

 

This next suggestion seems to be such a minimally explored area of adornment for a category with such a wide range of options. I’m talking about hair adornments. There are so many of them – barrettes, hair sticks, hairclips, hair combs, hair beads, bun caps and cages, hair slides, tiaras, head wreathes, hairbands, headbands, hair charms, hair rings, and hair twisters (a.k.a hair spirals or ponytail wraps). I am partial to hair slides myself because they can double as scarf and shawl pins so you can pull them out for all kinds of occasions. You can see how I make mine with the in-depth tutorial in the Polymer Art Projects – Organics book. Here’s another example of a hair slide from Emily May. Like the incense burners, as long as you planned for the basic form, one that allows a stick to pass through from one side to the other, you can create pretty much whatever you want.

 

And I did mention the nothing should be safe from polymer in the house? I can’t tell you how often I look up at window molding or the insets in a door panel or the trim on a cabinet and think “A bit of polymer could go right there!” Okay, maybe I’m pushing it for someone with limited studio time who wants to add sculptural elements, not canes or other veneers, to large immovable parts of my house. So, does may be a cane covered table sound more reasonable? That can be pretty ambitious as well but at least it can go with you if you move or can be sold. Just look at the table by Alice Stroppel that opens this post, or this amazing work by Bridget Derc.

Bridget’s canes are intense, as is her process, really. You have to skim through her Flickr photostream a bit (check out the bottom half of pages 3 and 4) but she posts a lot of photos of her process. It’s pretty amazing. And check out Alice’s website for more of her polymer table adventures.

 

Now, what if you’re into sculpture? How do you push the form there? I suppose if you normally sculpt “in the round” you can do bas-relief sculptures or vice versa. You could, of course, also venture into any of the other myriad areas of polymer and craft and apply your sculptural skills there, but this next piece might give you a whole other set of ideas. Why not, literally, take your sculpture somewhere you haven’t taken it before. Like outside maybe?

Tatjana Raum photographs her tree spirit sculptures as if they are in trees, although I think these are all in detached parts of trees like large swaths of bark and pieces of drift or dead wood. Even if they are not attached to a living tree, the tree material gives these other-worldly faces an unusual context that enriches the sculpture and how a viewer will perceive it. And what if you did put a bit of polymer art into a living tree? What a great surprise for a passerby!

 

Okay, that is all for today. I’ve got to start making these posts a bit shorter as I will have a lot to do for the Virtual Art Box each month. I am so super excited about what I have for our adventurous art boxers though. I don’t think it’s going to be what anyone is really expecting but I think it’s going to be a fantastic surprise, especially for readers who really loved The Polymer Arts magazine. I think we’re going to get to know each other a lot better and are in for a really creative year!

 

For now, have a wonderful and really creative week and I’ll see you next weekend!

 

Go Big or Go Personal

January 5, 2020

So, here we are. The new year has begun, and we have 12 months and nearly 52 weeks of possibilities before us. Will you be changing the way you work or challenging yourself this coming year?

If you read last week’s post, you know I have mixed feelings about New Year’s resolutions, but I do believe in always having goals. Goals give you something to bounce out of bed for in the morning. Even small goals can get you up and going and keep you focused. However, this weekend I want to talk about making big goals, or particularly big projects.

This will mean different things to different people but whether or not the idea of doing something challenging in size or scope appeals to you, I think it’s just one of those things you should periodically ask yourself. Do I want to do something big, monumental, dramatic, or just drastically different? There is nothing wrong with saying no and just focusing on small, easily manageable projects. But I think you ought to ask the question just to be sure.

Nearly a decade ago, I interviewed Gwen Piña who, at the time, was the most prolific polymer artist I knew of in our community, with over 600 accounts she regularly fulfilled orders for. (She has since retired from polymer.) With all that work, I was really surprised when she took me to a side room to show me her personal projects. These were rather tall dolls and other pieces made from found objects and polymer. These were her personal projects which she didn’t always try to sell. Although they took time away from her primary wholesale work, she acknowledged that she needed that creative outlet to make her happy.

I think that is an important consideration. Not everything you make has to sell. Actually, unless your livelihood depends upon it, nothing you make needs to be sold. Go ahead – create for the sake of creating! How freeing is that idea? I bring this up because, many times, our big personal projects are not something that is either easy to sell or easy for us to part with.

So, setting aside the idea that everything you make has to support a business, let’s talk about big personal projects you might consider taking on to feed your soul.

A Big Way

Large, showy art pieces are often referred to as “statement” pieces. Big necklaces, towering vases, and wildly colorful wall sculptures can all be considered statement pieces when they outshine the wearer or dominate the room they occupy.

There is more latitude given for the functionality of craft art that is created as a statement piece. Awkward and uncomfortable collar necklaces, dangerously spiky brooches, and vases that are too monumental to hold any kind of flower arrangement are forgiven their lack of functionality in exchange for being a conversation piece or attention grabber. These can be great fun to create because you have fewer restrictions with that concern for functional construction set aside. If you’re looking for a bit more freedom in your designs this year, this might be something to explore.

But what if we change that definition of a statement piece and attach it to work that is primarily personal—making that kind of work a personal statement piece, as in you have something to say. You may just want to share your aesthetic views, or you may have opinions about the state of the world, or you might aim to share the emotion of a personal experience. These are all expressions of the artist being taken from inside themselves and put out into the world. That’s really at the core of what, arguably, defines something as a piece of art.

So how about YOU get noticed for some “big” piece of yours this year that is focused on expressing what you want to put out into the world? Being that this kind of project is more for you, you also get to define what a big project means to you. It could be literally large. It could also be small but so minutely thought out or detailed that it is big in terms of its process and scope. A big project could be based on a really delicate or difficult personal subject that you have previously found hard to share. It could also be a large collection of work instead of a single piece. Or a piece made up of a lot of smaller pieces. Do any of these ideas spark a fire in you?

Let’s look at just a few “big projects” other artists have taken in polymer.

 

Thinking Big

Heather Campbell goes big quite often. The piece of hers that opens this blog, Trippin’ in Spain, is 6 feet long! A handful of years ago, you might have seen the challenge she took on of making this insanely detailed polymer quilt called Keep Circling. Much of the texture and pattern is created with the attachment of many small, but easily replicated accents and objects as can be seen in the detail shot.

This piece is both a great approach to creating big, beautiful artwork in polymer and a metaphor for how to take on a big project or any daunting goal. Just do one small thing at a time and, if you just keep at it, next thing you know, you have something huge and amazing and that goal is reached.

 

A similar approach can be used in jewelry. A gloriously monumental bit of adornment does not have to be complicated. You can simply make a lot of something that you love to create and bring it together into a single magnificent piece. Gloria Danvers does a lot of this type of thing with polymer butterflies, leaves, and other caned shapes.

 

You know how I mentioned you could set your big goal to not just be one thing but that you might consider just creating a big collection? Well, what if you did both? That’s essentially what Jeffrey Lloyd Dever did with his Edensong Revisited installation piece from 2011. Taking dozens of individual pieces, he created a fascinating wall piece that you have to just keep looking at to take it all in.

Edensong Revisited | 2011 | Approx. 50”H x 42” W x 3.5” D | Polymer clay, steel wire, plastic coated wire, repurposed mixed media, latex paint | Photo credit: Jon Bolton/Racine Art Museum

 

The idea of something big for you though, might just be a project that’s really different and daring. If so, I would strongly suggest looking at artwork in other mediums for inspiration, not just polymer. I don’t know if anyone’s doing any really wild with ear cuffs like the ones below in polymer, but this is just one possible inspiration for what could be done with polymer and unique forms of jewelry. Check out this site for some wild pieces. No artists are listed although they do say these are handmade.

 

Sometimes your big idea can simply be sticking with a particular theme and really pushing yourself to see what you can do with it. I got a wonderful email from blog reader Suzanne Andrews, noting how the last post on having a goal really resonated with her. She’d already started on her goal to get focused this year by cleaning up her studio (and that’s a pretty big project for many of us, I know!) And then, she said she, “placed one photograph for reference on the wall in the studio. It is of a painting that speaks to me and my goal is to create pieces that belong with this painting.” I don’t know if she’ll make anything literally big or complex, but I love that idea of committing to that painting. It will give her a focus on something that she feels personally connected to, which can take some bravery. And that is a statement!

 

The Big Idea

So, whether or not you’re ready to take on something big, in whatever way you define it, or just want to play around this year, I’m hoping to make setting goals, or at least working on a focus, to be a bigger part of what we talk about throughout this year. It’s something I’m going to focus on with the Virtual Art Box, hoping for those of you who are up for it, to make what I share with you a more active kind of information exchange. Most of us aren’t reading this to simply pass the time, are we? This material and our creativity drive us to make art, right? So, let’s do that and make art that we are personally passionate about! I can’t tell you how fulfilling it is to take risks and push yourself. You won’t always succeed but, man, when you do, there’s nothing like it!

We’ll go over a few other ideas for possible goals and focuses you might want to take on over the coming year if you’re not sure what you want to do yet, if anything. There really is no rush so just let ideas wash over you until something grabs you.

Myself, I need to put a rush on some things. I think we finally have the technical end ironed out for the new Virtual Art Box so I’m getting ready to get sign ups set up on the website. Just need a few more tests. Then back to whipping the content into shape. That’s my focus this week so keep an eye out for newsletters for more info and I’ll update you on the blog this next week and as well. Get on this list here to be notified first for special discounts.

 

Nudge Sale is Still On!

Don’t forget we have that nudge sale going for another week or so. Almost everything is on sale so if you need more inspiration at your fingertips as you set yourself up for a great creative year, hop over to the website and snatch up a great deal on beautiful print and digital publications!

 

 

Happy first full work week of 2020! Hope its a beautiful and creative one!

Man-made Handmade

Have you noticed that most people who work in polymer will cite nature as their primary inspiration? Do you, or would you, too? But isn’t it ironic that, as inspired as we are by nature, we work with a wholly man-made material? I’ve been thinking about this because, as I polished up the Polymer Journeys 2019 book, I was making notes on some of the trends and I noticed that all but three people who cited their inspiration said they were inspired by nature. It got me to thinking about why we aren’t more inspired by the man-made world, as rich and diverse as it is.

My curiosity piqued, I did some research and made more notes to see if, for one, my perception was correct in that polymer artists look to nature more than anything and, secondly, to see what things other than nature inspire people. So, the observations that inspiration from nature is predominant in polymer art was upheld by all I looked through. I also found it interesting that, when it boils down to it, nearly everything in almost all art forms looks to be inspired by nature or by man-made styles and designs that themselves were inspired by nature. To see examples of where nature is inspiration for man-made design, just take a look at styles such as Baroque or Art Deco. Flowers, trees, leaves, vines, butterflies, birds, and a myriad of other natural flora and fauna are evident sources of inspiration in the forms and lines of those styles. We might be inspired by the designs of that age but the inspiration is still rooted in nature.

However, I did my best to find pieces that were inspired by man-made objects, scenes, or styles. Let me tell you, it was not terribly easy but just because it is less often turned to does not mean it doesn’t have wonderful forms, colors, motifs, and textures for all of us. Let’s take a look at some of the work created by polymer artists who are inspired by the man-made.

A Gallery of Man-made Inspiration

One of the first people who came to mind when thinking about man-made inspiration was Cornelia Brockstedt. She has had several series such as “Street Life” and her “City” bangles. She also did a series of what she called “graphical studies” in 2015. So I went to her Flickr photo stream to find something to share with you and it struck me that, even with the graphical tendencies and inspiration taken from city life, there is so much organic that shows up in her work. This tended to be true with a lot of artists. This pendant, one of my favorite pieces of hers, was inspired by sidewalks and the grass that grows up from around it. So it was inspired by man-made walkways but with contrast in the nature that is still sneaking in.

 

Another artist who came to mind, even before I started my search, was Sona Grigoryan.  She did a lovely series of polymer and resin pieces inspired by the Barcelona cathedrals and stained-glass windows she sees where she lives.

 

And of course, we have to consider the work of the Georg Dinkel who is inspired by architecture and machinery to the extent that even when he decides to create some creatures, they too look mechanical. He is also, apparently, inspired by literature and humor, as this Don Quixote scene he set up with two of his mechanized creatures hints at.

 

And, when talking mechanical, we certainly can’t ignore the influence of the mechanical from movements like steampunk. From jewelry to sculpture to journals and phone cases, this style is everywhere but it’s hard to say whether polymer found steampunk or steampunk found polymer first. The steampunk monster heart that opened this post is a sculpture by Kimberly Hart who posts under MonsterKookies on Etsy.

Carol Blackburn, whose work is so colorful and graphic, often cites fashion styles and movements as her source of inspiration. I think these fall under her “Missoni” fashion inspired line.

 

Another artist who seems quite enamored of fabric but also of metal and other man-made textures is Nikolina Otrzan. Mostly, she’s just a texture fiend but you’ll notice that her textures generally have a certain uniformity to them that automatically makes them feel that they would be man-made in origin, whether they were intended to or not. Even her shapes, like these tube pieces, reflect a penchant for uniformity that is beautifully balanced with her choice of rough or edge softening surface treatments.

 

So has this got you pondering the possibilities of man-made forms and textures as a source of inspiration for you? I know I’ve been looking at the shapes in my house, the walls in the neighborhood, and the forms on the buildings I pass with new eyes.

Going for Man-made

Freebies

If you want to try a few man-made inspired textures or forms, there are quite a few out there although the quick and free were a bit more scarce. Nonetheless, here are a few pages with related free tutorials. You’ll want to pop the last two URLs into Google translate if it doesn’t automatically translate for you:

Tutorial Shops

Your best sources of tutorial with man-made inspiration are going to cost a couple of bucks, but are well worth it. Here are some of my favorite shops for this:

 

A Bit o’ News

And now for a few tidbits about things going on in the polymer community you might want to know about:

Vote for the 2018 International Polymer Clay Awards!

The International Polymer Clay Association member voting is now open through March 8. Active members should have received an email with a link for your ballot. If your membership has expired please renew at www.theipca.org before March 8, 2019 so that you may vote for your favorites.

Dan Cormier and Tracy Holmes Online Courses

Dan and Tracy have recently announced the lineup for their 2019 online Master Classes. Check out the present information and sign up for future announcements on their website here.

Polymer Journeys 2019 has been released!
  • Our latest publication, the second installment of the Polymer Journeys retrospective series was released this morning in digital format for those who purchased early or otherwise supported the project. (It was noon PST time if you need to search your inbox or your spam folder if not there.)
  • Print Pre-orders (ordered prior to Feb 27th) will go into the mail a little later than we had hoped but will be shipped directly from the printer on March 6. Our shipment should be our doorstep March 8, so newer orders will ship out as soon as we have them in our hot little hands. Buy yours here if you haven’t yet. (We’ve already sold half our print run so don’t wait too long!)
  • BOGO Half Off! We’ve added special package pricing for the new book … Purchase both the 2016 and 2019 edition of Polymer Journeys with half off the 2016 book, or get both the print and digital edition of the new 2019 book with half off the digital. No promo code needed. Packages available here when you click on the Polymer Journeys book cover here.
  • The Polymer Arts Collection on sale for HALF off! Purchases the whole collection of The Polymer Arts and get HALF off  the entire package – all 29 Digital issues or the 23 Print issues we still have available. If you want to collect them, now would be the time!

Until next week, have an inspired and creative Sunday and upcoming week!

Giving Your Piece Purpose

April 23, 2015
Posted in

nicolas nora box pendantCovering containers is not a new concept for clayers, but how small would you go? There are all kinds of small boxes, tubes, and cases out there that can be transformed into interesting polymer container adornments. This pendant by Cyprus’ Nicolas and Nora is just one such example I dug up. They’ve given the container a very specific purpose as well, which is just about as interesting as this charming pendant.

They label these ‘prayer box necklaces’ in their Etsy listing. They go on to describe in detail what a prayer box is and how to use it by saying these are “used by religious faithful to help them focus on their specific prayer needs and to facilitate contemplation on one’s faith … most people stuff notes of prayer items into the boxes. Think about what you truly want and write it down. Writing your desires out give them energy and increase the likelihood that your wishes will be answered.”

Not only is it a nice idea, but by giving the pendant a particular purpose is also a smart way to sell. It’s not unlike staging a house. If you can show people just what they can do with what you have for them, they are much more likely to buy because they can imagine, in a very specific way, how they themselves would use your piece. So, if you do make any kind of container adornment or house decor, display and photograph the work with possible things it could contain, not as a primary presentation, but for the purpose of selling such as you would in your online shop or at a craft show. It turns the work from just something beautiful to look at (not that this shouldn’t be enough!) into something the buyer/wearer can customize and use for a more personal and connected interaction with your work.

Nicolas and Nora don’t seem to have any more of these container-style necklaces in their shop right now, but if you like this earthy, bohemian look, or are curious what other personal approaches they use to grab the interest of their potential customers, jump on over to their Etsy shop and take a look around.

 

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An Accessory with Room to Play

April 22, 2015
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ThermesosPurseforWeb-700x525We’re going to move from container pendants to another type of container accessory, the purse. Purses are not the easiest creations to make in polymer, but with all that open space, there is so much that could be done. And, this is one of the huge advantages of artistic container accessories–you have a lot of real estate and several sides to work with. For those of you that sell, also consider that handbags have a high price point, so all the hard work that you put into your masterpiece is more likely to be well paid for.

It would be impossible to bring this form up without mentioning the queen of polymer handbags, Kathleen Dustin. Over the last year or so she has been working in a beautiful series she calls The World Traveler, highly influenced by the amazing ceramicist Vicki Grant who I’ve featured on here a couple of times before. Kathleen’s work has a wide breadth of texture, motifs, forms and color palettes, but the approach and craftsmanship is still quite readily recognizable. She has created some very complex purses in the past, but I found this one particularly appealing because it is a bit more straightforward, and its relatively simple structure allows the treatment of the clay to really shine. I also figured, if you ever wanted to try your hand at polymer purses, you can readily see here that it can be typically purse-like but highly artistic with so much room for play.

It seems like only a handful of purses and necklaces from her recent collections have been making the rounds on the Internet, so do stop and treat yourself to a more extensive view on her website. And a happy birthday to Kathleen who, yesterday, celebrated another year on this earth and another year regaling us with her beautiful work. Keep it up for many, many more years if you would please!

 

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The Form of a Box Pendant

April 21, 2015
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enkhe box as pendantsHere is another take on the inro form; although, the creator has labeled these “Box as Pendant” pieces. Enkhtsetseg Tserenbadam’s versions are not as heavily decorated as what we saw yesterday, but the variety of forms is a pleasure to see. The interest lies in the surface treatment and color combinations, which subtly accent the primarily organic forms.

Enkhe’s work is often hollow, although, not always in order to hold something and not always as a jewelry. She makes purses and table top boxes. She does play a lot with hollow forms in her jewelry but with many a revealing opening. Her largely minimal palettes make her forms particularly important, and that is where most of her focus lies.

Enkhe’s work can be found online, primarily on her art website.

 

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A Round Take on a Traditional Case

April 20, 2015
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Pavla-Beatle Inro boxWhat would you say to a week of small, wearable containers? I personally have a very particular interest (maybe a tiny bit of an obsession) with things that little treasures and secrets can be stored in. So, I’ve been digging up a number of interesting examples of wearable cases, and there is more variety in this than I would have thought.

This little beauty is styled after an inro; a traditional Japanese container that would have been hung from a waist sash. Traditional Japanese dress did not have anything like pockets, so the inros would be the method by which small necessities could be carried. They grew from purely functional objects to works of high art and have, obviously, been adopted for adornment beyond what would accompany traditional Japanese dress.

This inro style container is by Pavla Cepelikova. She created a series of these over the last couple years that she calls Beatle Inro Boxes. I believe the reference would be to the insects not to the band, but I could be wrong. The wing-like shapes created by the polymer inlay is certainly reminiscent of a beetle. The flat top works as a cap, sliding up the cord as an inro top would. Yes, we would usually see the inro in more of a box shape and with an overlapping cap, but this does work the same way. The shape and surface decoration make for an original and charming version of the traditional case. It’s a good example of taking a traditional idea and moving beyond what is usually done with it.

You can see the rest of the series on Pavla’s Flickr pages along with many other little beauties. Enjoy!

 

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Outside Inspiration: A Burst of Swirling Spots

April 17, 2015
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BTakenaka

I pulled this one out particularly for you mad cane slicing artists who might want some fresh ideas for creating patterns with your slices. Barbara Takenaga is a painter who works solely in pattern rather than imagery or abstraction. Her paintings have the illusion of depth and movement that creates wonderful drama, as well as an often mesmerizing effect.

Since the energy and movement is created by the arrangement and size of the forms–spots, in this case–one can easily imagine creating such movement with cane slices using canes of various sizes. A few extruded snakes to emphasize the lines and you could end up with some pretty amazing wall or decorative art.

Time spent wandering her gallery is like a trip through a galactic field of stars and sometimes kind of like an acid trip, but it’s wonderfully engrossing. You will get lost in the work. You have been warned.

http://www.barbaratakenaga.com/

 

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Spirited Patterns

April 16, 2015
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spiritwearelephantA week of dramatic patterns would not be complete without a little Jon Anderson. You have likely seen at least a few of his larger, cane covered animals or maybe his bowls or even his guitars. But, have you seen his jewelry?

Jon’s fascination with canes is all about the pattern. The forms he covers are more of a canvas than the source of inspiration. Of course, animals and the spirit of them is where his finds a home for his patterns, but his canes come from what he has seen on his travels in other decorative artwork, as well as architecture and the decorative elements of buildings.

Jon has such an amazing eye for how to lay out the canes in a way that enhances the form. Also, his canes are so carefully created and reduced that he can bring them down to a size that can be applied onto forms as small as the pendants you see here. This means that many of us can afford to collect a few, even when our budgets are small.

Although Jon is American, he lives and creates in Bali with his wife who takes care of his promotions and PR. He also has an agent in the US who takes care of the sales and distribution of his work, so Jon gets to just focus on his art. Lucky, lucky guy.

You can read one of his only personal interviews in the Spring 2012 issue of The Polymer Arts and see more of his work on his website.

 

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A Patterned Rainbow

April 15, 2015
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aGarrod Rainbow neckringConsistent forms or motifs in a pattern can get a bit stale, but they can also be raised to sublime heights with the judicious use of color. In this case here, Angela Garrod uses a gradient wash of color across a series of alternating lines consisting of triangles, more like arrows, to bring in variation and change the atmosphere of the piece.

The arrows create energy that pushes the eye back and forth across the width of this ‘neckring’ as she calls these forms, but the soft colors bring in a calming element. The gradient of color in the rest of the circle is deep and rich, and it borders on almost being too much of a contrast to the soft color of the center texture. But that tension may be just what Angela is after, and only the viewer or–maybe more importantly–a buyer can say whether it really works or not.

Angela has been playing quite a bit with patterns of late, as well as this interesting form of neck adornment. To see just what she has been up to, flip through her shared photos on Flickr and the gallery on her website.

 

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A Nod to Klimt

April 14, 2015
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95292610A bit of dramatic patterning can be accomplished with a combination of patterns. Here we have an attractive combination of very Klimt-like colors and lines along with a few jeweled accents to give our eyes a stopping place here and there to rest. The accents also visually anchor the patterned clay in order to keep our view from regularly wandering off the edges.

I originally found this set on the ever intriguing blog Parole de Pate (translates as “Word of Dough” by Google, but let’s go with “Words of Clay” or its subtitle “Petit Journal de la Polymere”, which shouldn’t really need translation.)

In any case, that is where I found Arliane of Paris who made this set. She is very heavy into visual patterning, especially in the mokume techniques with some really gorgeous color palettes. For more of Arliane’s work, take a look at her blog pages.

 

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Bringing it back to the Center

April 11, 2015
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8171459235_6ae81beb18_oI was trying to find a piece that kind of brought together all the various approaches that we talked about this week. Finding something that specific is a little tough, but this piece by Slovenian artist, Tina Mežek hits on a number of approaches to create a really dramatic focal on her necklace.

Obviously size is helping to make the focal bead stand out, but also those lines on the gold layer of the frame all move inward, drawing the eye that direction. The red against black is a classic dramatic color combination as well, and that black is so dark, it can work like negative space, especially if worn on dark clothing. So you see, many approaches can be brought together to heighten the drama when that is what you are after.

If this subject has piqued your interest , you can get further ideas by simply keeping an eye on how other people have used contrast, composition, negative space, line, etc. to bring about some really dramatic focal points.

 

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