A Stroppel Ocean

July 31, 2015

stroppel cane Dev80

I was going to share the new Fall Cover here but have a couple of bits of information we would like to confirm before we do. Creating a magazine is all details, details, details and they are never-ending! We’ll have it on here by Monday but if you’re just too curious, we’ll send it out in our newsletter tomorrow morning. (Don’t get our newsletter yet? Sign up here–it’s the box on the left of the page–for twice monthly news, tips, eye candy and other fun chatter.)

In the meantime, who would have thought that a Stroppel cane, often used in very graphical designs, would be so reminiscent of the ocean? This beautiful collar by Mara Devescovi, which is all Stroppel cane, certainly looks like the undulating water of a crystal clean ocean as you might see it on some tropical beach. Who would have thought that random cane morphing would emulate in the way the movement of the water distorts the world beneath it. It really gets one thinking about a summer escape, I must say!

Mara goes by Dev’Art60 on Flickr where her progress in polymer art over the last decade can be followed and lots of great ideas can be found along the way.  

 

If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.

  TPA_McGuire_blog ad    

What We See in Lines

October 8, 2013

We’ve all doodled at some point. There’s something addictive about putting an inactive pen or pencil to paper and drawing random lines, allowing them to be aimless and formless until perhaps we see something in our doodles and from it create an actual image or design. I’m sure you’ve done that same kind of thing in clay, whether you equated it to doodling or not. The random, seemingly aimless lines we draw or carve or lay out with a snake of clay are suggestions of things that already exist out there in the world. Like looking for shapes in the clouds, our minds will see an object or creature or other symbol in the clay, if you give them a little time.

I think this may have something to do with the fact that you can find similar lines in nature for almost any line you randomly come up with. However, nature’s lines are rarely aimless. The winding path of a stream or river, the marks of receded waves in the sand, or the undulating profile of a mountain range on the horizon are all lines that don’t have consistency or focal points, but are still very purposeful—they are the result of change and action and define some feature of nature. Seeing this, I think we want to find purpose in lines that look random and decide what they might define. That would be why you would look at these earrings by Lina Brusnika and see in the layer of undulating lines a landscape, maybe hills or a beach at sunset. Lina looks to live in Kamchatka, a peninsula in the far east of Russia. Her posted photos on LiveJournal of beaches and sunsets make me think she had these views on her mind when she created these.

10046437826_840d82c4a2

We as humans want to see our world in every line; so consider how your lines, especially the ones you think of as abstract, might be viewed. Usually what you think you see in it will be how at least some others will see it. So if your aimless lines look like vines, you might continue with the plant theme by adding leaf-like flicks of clay for accents. Or if they are rather straight and precise, a very graphic look might be developed from those. If you want to work with a particular set of colors, what do they represent to you? If they remind you of a tropical beach, then simple, soft lines representative of an open beach, the ripple of waves on the ocean, and/or the waving fronds of palm trees might work well and will likely be recognized by the viewer of the work, since the colors and lines are both associated with such a scene.

So doodle away with pen or clay and see where the lines take you.

A Stroppel Ocean

July 31, 2015
Posted in

stroppel cane Dev80

I was going to share the new Fall Cover here but have a couple of bits of information we would like to confirm before we do. Creating a magazine is all details, details, details and they are never-ending! We’ll have it on here by Monday but if you’re just too curious, we’ll send it out in our newsletter tomorrow morning. (Don’t get our newsletter yet? Sign up here–it’s the box on the left of the page–for twice monthly news, tips, eye candy and other fun chatter.)

In the meantime, who would have thought that a Stroppel cane, often used in very graphical designs, would be so reminiscent of the ocean? This beautiful collar by Mara Devescovi, which is all Stroppel cane, certainly looks like the undulating water of a crystal clean ocean as you might see it on some tropical beach. Who would have thought that random cane morphing would emulate in the way the movement of the water distorts the world beneath it. It really gets one thinking about a summer escape, I must say!

Mara goes by Dev’Art60 on Flickr where her progress in polymer art over the last decade can be followed and lots of great ideas can be found along the way.  

 

If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine, as well as by supporting our advertising partners.

  TPA_McGuire_blog ad    

Read More

What We See in Lines

October 8, 2013
Posted in

We’ve all doodled at some point. There’s something addictive about putting an inactive pen or pencil to paper and drawing random lines, allowing them to be aimless and formless until perhaps we see something in our doodles and from it create an actual image or design. I’m sure you’ve done that same kind of thing in clay, whether you equated it to doodling or not. The random, seemingly aimless lines we draw or carve or lay out with a snake of clay are suggestions of things that already exist out there in the world. Like looking for shapes in the clouds, our minds will see an object or creature or other symbol in the clay, if you give them a little time.

I think this may have something to do with the fact that you can find similar lines in nature for almost any line you randomly come up with. However, nature’s lines are rarely aimless. The winding path of a stream or river, the marks of receded waves in the sand, or the undulating profile of a mountain range on the horizon are all lines that don’t have consistency or focal points, but are still very purposeful—they are the result of change and action and define some feature of nature. Seeing this, I think we want to find purpose in lines that look random and decide what they might define. That would be why you would look at these earrings by Lina Brusnika and see in the layer of undulating lines a landscape, maybe hills or a beach at sunset. Lina looks to live in Kamchatka, a peninsula in the far east of Russia. Her posted photos on LiveJournal of beaches and sunsets make me think she had these views on her mind when she created these.

10046437826_840d82c4a2

We as humans want to see our world in every line; so consider how your lines, especially the ones you think of as abstract, might be viewed. Usually what you think you see in it will be how at least some others will see it. So if your aimless lines look like vines, you might continue with the plant theme by adding leaf-like flicks of clay for accents. Or if they are rather straight and precise, a very graphic look might be developed from those. If you want to work with a particular set of colors, what do they represent to you? If they remind you of a tropical beach, then simple, soft lines representative of an open beach, the ripple of waves on the ocean, and/or the waving fronds of palm trees might work well and will likely be recognized by the viewer of the work, since the colors and lines are both associated with such a scene.

So doodle away with pen or clay and see where the lines take you.

Read More
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