Outside Inspiration: Felted Color
December 19, 2014 Inspirational Art
I’m going to break a kind of rule here and show you a collage instead of just one of these colorful felted pieces by Japanese felt artist, Atsuko Sasaki. Because isn’t the collection just a beautiful composition and delightful explosion of color? I also thought you would find it more intriguing when you could see the variety of forms and color this very precise felter pulls together. And this way, I didn’t have to pick just one.
I think the possibilities of how this could inspire a polymer artist comes across much more from this grouping, too. The felt here has a saturation of color commonly seen in polymer, but in bold forms; the kind of which we don’t see so much from clayers. However, everything here could be done in a polymer version from the appliqued dots within dots to the inverted mushroom caps, to the alternately patterned material popping out through slashes in the fabric. Do they give you any ideas?
I originally found this collage and this work on a great little blog called Folt Bolt, but you can find more of Atsuko’s handbags, mufflers, vases and sculptural objects on her website. By the way, these pieces are quite big. You can see handbags and mufflers modeled in photos on her Facebook page.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Dreaming of Summer Colors (& New EU Taxes you should know about!)
December 18, 2014 Inspirational Art, Polymer community news
Shall we get the not-so-nice stuff out of the way first?
The New Not-Well-Thought-Out EU Digital Tax Laws hit Worldwide on the First of the Year
If you haven’t already heard, the European Union has new laws regarding selling digital products and services to European buyers, and it goes into effect January 1st. Unlike past VAT taxes that rarely, if ever, affected micro businesses and solo sellers, this one affects everyone who sells any digital goods or services TO Europe because this new law is based on where the buyer resides, not where the seller works. Yes, even you, you seller of $3 PDF tutorials! It’s a tad insane, and most of us small, struggling businesses and artists just found out in the last couple weeks that we need to register with the EU, implement new bookkeeping & documentation storage for at least 10 years, update shopping gateways and our websites, and possibly change who/what we sell through, and we need to have it all ready before the year ends in order to offer digital goods and services to Europe in 2015 and forward. Or, we can change to whom or how we sell digital stuff. Ugh!
I wanted to inform you all of this, so you have a chance to find out if this affects you as a seller of PDF tutorials, eBooks, patterns, subscription or member services, online advertising, or automated online services of any kind and allow you time to figure out what to do. AND, to be heard if you agree that this tax is detrimental to micro and solo businesses.
Please Help. Take Action to Fix this.
Get informed, and sign the petition to have a threshold set, so small, unique sellers don’t have to pull out of Europe or go out of business because they can’t afford to comply. You can find out more about the issues with the new laws on EUVATACtion.org and get the official summary of them on www.gov.uk.
The only possible salvation for many of us will be a service who can take care of the nightmare of documenting, setting up calculations, collecting and remitting the tax for you for all of the 28 European countries involved. There is only one viable service I have found so far, and they even offer it for free (up to 20 EU transactions a month), if they can integrate through your Paypal or similar payment service. If you think you’ll need this, write them at www.taxamo.com to find out if they can work for you.
Prices will Go Up; Buy or Renew Now
This sudden news does not give us here at The Polymer Arts enough time to make the changes needed to collect VAT on our digital magazine sales, so we will be using an exception in the law and will have to individually email digital issues of The Polymer Arts to European readers as of next month. This will be costly labor-wise, so we’ll have no choice but to increase prices for these manually sent issues. But, this will cost the European buyer far less than paying VAT. So, if you’re in Europe and you haven’t renewed or bought those back issues in digital that you were thinking of getting, now would be the time to do that. Just go to our website, www.thepolymerarts.com/Subscribe.html, before the end of the year when prices for European digital purchases will go up.
How about today we have a moment of color indulgence with color maven and polymer pioneer, Lindly Haunani. Aren’t these colors just yummy. I know that’s not the most technical artistic term, but that about sums it up!
This image is a preview of what she’ll be teaching at Maureen Carlsons Center for Creative Arts. The workshop is entitled “Joy Garden: Translucent Polymer Innovations”, and it’ll be held Sunday, August 9th – Friday, August 14th, 2015. Yep, it’s about time to start planning for summer fun, don’t you think? Okay, maybe it’s a ways off, but you probably want to grab a spot in this workshop sooner rather than later and for those of us seeing snow out our windows, it’s kind of fun to dream about summer isn’t it?
Lindly’s blog and website, as well as her book and DVD set, are a wealth of information on color. Just jump over to her website to get links to all her wonderful stuff.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Painterly Color
December 17, 2014 Inspirational Art
Although polymer is certainly a wonderful medium for precisely applied or built-in color, I have to say the painterly effects that we are seeing a lot of these days are so intriguing. The approach and application usually involves the inclusion of another medium, which opens the color quality to a wide range of possibilities beyond what the clay itself has to offer.
Margit Bohmer has been playing with pastels and polymer for quite a while. I can’t recall off the top of my head anyone else that has been quite so exploratory with this combination. Much of her work looks like color-stained wood or stone. The way she forms, carves and antiques her beads results in a rough, almost tribal quality; although, contemporary shapes do regularly emerge. Considering those characteristics, I thought this fun and beautifully colorful piece really stood out in her collection on Flickr. The wavy line contrasts rather strongly with the scratched tube beads, but with all the pieces treated with the same painterly color application it all comes together.
Jump over to Margit’s Flickr photostream or Etsy shop for a non-stop painterly color parade.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Our Interaction with Color
December 16, 2014 Inspirational Art
Today’s piece pays homage to one of my favorite painter’s of the last century, Wassily Kandinsky, whose birthday happens to be today. Kandinsky is considered the first artist to create purely abstract art and was one of the foremost Expressionist painters, as well as being an artistic theorist. He was especially concerned with our personal reactions to color, as in how we interact viscerally with what we see. He wrote in his book Du spirituel dans l’art (Concerning the Spiritual in Art), “Colours on the painter’s palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye, which is charmed by the beauty of colours, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an “inner resonance”—a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself.”
Isn’t that just lovely?
This necklace was created by Cecilia Leonini of Italy. To honor Kandinsky’s thoughts and not influence your reaction, I’m not going to comment on this piece. How do you find yourself reacting to it, to the color, form and imagery? Do you see what Kandinsky was referring to in terms of our interaction with color?
You can find more of Cecilia’s work in her Etsy shop. I only just discovered her through the Polymer Clay Artist’s Guild of Etsy which I am a member of. If you sell on Etsy and aren’t a member of the PCAGOE, do consider joining–start by clicking here. This group was key in encouraging and inspiring me when I was still new and uncertain, and many are what we affectionately refer to as the midwives of The Polymer Arts magazine, helping to form the concept and vet ideas for its creation and content when it first started out. They are a wonderful support group and a wealth of information and inspiration!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
I’m going to break a kind of rule here and show you a collage instead of just one of these colorful felted pieces by Japanese felt artist, Atsuko Sasaki. Because isn’t the collection just a beautiful composition and delightful explosion of color? I also thought you would find it more intriguing when you could see the variety of forms and color this very precise felter pulls together. And this way, I didn’t have to pick just one.
I think the possibilities of how this could inspire a polymer artist comes across much more from this grouping, too. The felt here has a saturation of color commonly seen in polymer, but in bold forms; the kind of which we don’t see so much from clayers. However, everything here could be done in a polymer version from the appliqued dots within dots to the inverted mushroom caps, to the alternately patterned material popping out through slashes in the fabric. Do they give you any ideas?
I originally found this collage and this work on a great little blog called Folt Bolt, but you can find more of Atsuko’s handbags, mufflers, vases and sculptural objects on her website. By the way, these pieces are quite big. You can see handbags and mufflers modeled in photos on her Facebook page.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Read More
Shall we get the not-so-nice stuff out of the way first?
The New Not-Well-Thought-Out EU Digital Tax Laws hit Worldwide on the First of the Year
If you haven’t already heard, the European Union has new laws regarding selling digital products and services to European buyers, and it goes into effect January 1st. Unlike past VAT taxes that rarely, if ever, affected micro businesses and solo sellers, this one affects everyone who sells any digital goods or services TO Europe because this new law is based on where the buyer resides, not where the seller works. Yes, even you, you seller of $3 PDF tutorials! It’s a tad insane, and most of us small, struggling businesses and artists just found out in the last couple weeks that we need to register with the EU, implement new bookkeeping & documentation storage for at least 10 years, update shopping gateways and our websites, and possibly change who/what we sell through, and we need to have it all ready before the year ends in order to offer digital goods and services to Europe in 2015 and forward. Or, we can change to whom or how we sell digital stuff. Ugh!
I wanted to inform you all of this, so you have a chance to find out if this affects you as a seller of PDF tutorials, eBooks, patterns, subscription or member services, online advertising, or automated online services of any kind and allow you time to figure out what to do. AND, to be heard if you agree that this tax is detrimental to micro and solo businesses.
Please Help. Take Action to Fix this.
Get informed, and sign the petition to have a threshold set, so small, unique sellers don’t have to pull out of Europe or go out of business because they can’t afford to comply. You can find out more about the issues with the new laws on EUVATACtion.org and get the official summary of them on www.gov.uk.
The only possible salvation for many of us will be a service who can take care of the nightmare of documenting, setting up calculations, collecting and remitting the tax for you for all of the 28 European countries involved. There is only one viable service I have found so far, and they even offer it for free (up to 20 EU transactions a month), if they can integrate through your Paypal or similar payment service. If you think you’ll need this, write them at www.taxamo.com to find out if they can work for you.
Prices will Go Up; Buy or Renew Now
This sudden news does not give us here at The Polymer Arts enough time to make the changes needed to collect VAT on our digital magazine sales, so we will be using an exception in the law and will have to individually email digital issues of The Polymer Arts to European readers as of next month. This will be costly labor-wise, so we’ll have no choice but to increase prices for these manually sent issues. But, this will cost the European buyer far less than paying VAT. So, if you’re in Europe and you haven’t renewed or bought those back issues in digital that you were thinking of getting, now would be the time to do that. Just go to our website, www.thepolymerarts.com/Subscribe.html, before the end of the year when prices for European digital purchases will go up.
How about today we have a moment of color indulgence with color maven and polymer pioneer, Lindly Haunani. Aren’t these colors just yummy. I know that’s not the most technical artistic term, but that about sums it up!
This image is a preview of what she’ll be teaching at Maureen Carlsons Center for Creative Arts. The workshop is entitled “Joy Garden: Translucent Polymer Innovations”, and it’ll be held Sunday, August 9th – Friday, August 14th, 2015. Yep, it’s about time to start planning for summer fun, don’t you think? Okay, maybe it’s a ways off, but you probably want to grab a spot in this workshop sooner rather than later and for those of us seeing snow out our windows, it’s kind of fun to dream about summer isn’t it?
Lindly’s blog and website, as well as her book and DVD set, are a wealth of information on color. Just jump over to her website to get links to all her wonderful stuff.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Read More
Although polymer is certainly a wonderful medium for precisely applied or built-in color, I have to say the painterly effects that we are seeing a lot of these days are so intriguing. The approach and application usually involves the inclusion of another medium, which opens the color quality to a wide range of possibilities beyond what the clay itself has to offer.
Margit Bohmer has been playing with pastels and polymer for quite a while. I can’t recall off the top of my head anyone else that has been quite so exploratory with this combination. Much of her work looks like color-stained wood or stone. The way she forms, carves and antiques her beads results in a rough, almost tribal quality; although, contemporary shapes do regularly emerge. Considering those characteristics, I thought this fun and beautifully colorful piece really stood out in her collection on Flickr. The wavy line contrasts rather strongly with the scratched tube beads, but with all the pieces treated with the same painterly color application it all comes together.
Jump over to Margit’s Flickr photostream or Etsy shop for a non-stop painterly color parade.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Read MoreToday’s piece pays homage to one of my favorite painter’s of the last century, Wassily Kandinsky, whose birthday happens to be today. Kandinsky is considered the first artist to create purely abstract art and was one of the foremost Expressionist painters, as well as being an artistic theorist. He was especially concerned with our personal reactions to color, as in how we interact viscerally with what we see. He wrote in his book Du spirituel dans l’art (Concerning the Spiritual in Art), “Colours on the painter’s palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye, which is charmed by the beauty of colours, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an “inner resonance”—a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself.”
Isn’t that just lovely?
This necklace was created by Cecilia Leonini of Italy. To honor Kandinsky’s thoughts and not influence your reaction, I’m not going to comment on this piece. How do you find yourself reacting to it, to the color, form and imagery? Do you see what Kandinsky was referring to in terms of our interaction with color?
You can find more of Cecilia’s work in her Etsy shop. I only just discovered her through the Polymer Clay Artist’s Guild of Etsy which I am a member of. If you sell on Etsy and aren’t a member of the PCAGOE, do consider joining–start by clicking here. This group was key in encouraging and inspiring me when I was still new and uncertain, and many are what we affectionately refer to as the midwives of The Polymer Arts magazine, helping to form the concept and vet ideas for its creation and content when it first started out. They are a wonderful support group and a wealth of information and inspiration!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Read More