Shaking Color
June 13, 2018 Inspirational Art
Imbuing your pieces with energetic color has a lot to do with contrast. The colors do not necessarily have to be bold and bright, although bright colors have an inherent energy of their own, but rather they need to be a mix of warm and cool, bright and muted, or any combination of color characteristics that make the colors vie for dominance, visually.
The colors in this brooch by Pavla Cepelikova have a fun combination of bright and muted as well as cool and warm colors. By themselves, they would give this piece a moderate amount of energy. Applying the colors in stripes adds to the intensity of energy as variation in color alternates up and down those striped strips.
Her use of lines also adds a tremendous amount of energy. Not unlike the way they use lines in animation to denote when something is moving, she has added energetic lines around the petals as if they are shaking on the surface of the brooch. The combination of energetic color and lines makes for a very lively piece.
This combination of line and color energy seems to be a recent exploration of Pavla’s. You can see what she’s done with it so far on her Flickr photostream and in her Etsy shop.
A Painterly Cane
June 1, 2018 Inspirational Art
Here’s one last example for this week of these incredible illustrative image canes we are seeing these days. This one uses the more familiar and common imagery of flowers which so many cane makers are inspired by. However, the way Jayne Dwyer creates her flower here makes it look like a painting, with color variation and details that are not very common in polymer clay flower canes.
Jayne employees outlining, which we saw at work in Claire’s piece on Monday, but here it is quite a bit more dramatic with its black and white outlines. The soft gradation of color plays a contrast to the hard black-and-white delineation around the flower. It makes it really pop. She also created a painterly background for the flower within the cane itself. The streaks of color are varied but create radiating lines that give an energized, dimensional feel to the petals.
And then she has these spots of color that pop up within those gradations. It’s very detailed and interesting to look at closely and imagine all the decisions she made to come up with this image. I don’t suppose the decisions are much different than one would make when painting, but in polymer, each decision takes some serious confidence and dedication to the image since how it will look is not going to be wholly apparent until after reduction.
Take a close-up look for yourself at the image in this cane or go to a bigger image on Facebook. You can also see more of the work Jayne does on her website.
Close Color Calls
December 14, 2016 Inspirational Art
Our Color Spotlight section of the Winter 2016 issue of The Polymer Arts was graced by Donna Kato, interview by Lindly Haunani. How amazing is that combination?! Donna let us in on her colored pencil experiments and her reasoning behind her approach. Although colored pencil on polymer is not new, it is always fascinating to see into the workings of an artistic mind and since this section focuses on color choices and inspiration, we got a peek at how this master choose colors for her explorations.
One piece that I was sent to consider including was this beautiful necklace you see here. We ended up focusing so much on the pencil work that there really wasn’t a place for this in the article but it certainly deserves a bit of attention. Each section of the necklace deals with one basic hue in two different values. The disparate placement offsets the regularity of each hue showcased in the same shape and the relative dark to light hue being basically the same within each color set. The delicious saturated colors don’t hurt it at all either.
The most active page to see what Donna has been up to in her own art looks to be her Facebook page although you can see some of her more honed work and learn from her wisdom by going over to check out her classes on CraftArtEdu.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Let’s play with color hue. Pick 2-3 colors–they can contrast, be analogous (next to each other on the color wheel) or simply be your favorites. Choose two variations of each color–different saturation (how pure a hue it is), values (dark or light), or tints/shades (additions of white/black.) Now use just these to create a new piece.
_________________________________________
Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners.
_________________________________________
Outside Inspiration: Reuse & Repeat
March 6, 2015 Inspirational Art
Earlier this week, I mentioned that you can avoid creating less-than-exciting pieces that use consistent repetition by adding variation or creating unusual or surprising visual impact. Well, today’s piece, created by jewelry artist Kathleen Nowak Tucci, has some serious impact while still using the same form, texture and accents repeated over and over. The impact of this piece comes from the gorgeous, shimmery color. There is a touch of variation in color, but I think this would still be eye-catching if it was all the same color. We sure do like our bright and shiny. Now, do you know what this is made from?
If you make your coffee with a Nespresso machine, then you might have recognized those colors from the capsules used in the appliance. Kathleen’s use of these started with a visit to a friend who used these. She was drawn to the beautiful colors and asked her friend to save the used ones. Now, she’s made a full-line of jewelry from these toss away cups.
I love that Kathleen has created something so beautiful from items we would normally toss out without a second thought. Well, that’s not wholly true. I bet polymer addicts would stop to admire the great colors and might have even wondered if they could be used in the studio. Actually, I know I saw some combination of these with polymer a while back. Although I could not find them just now, maybe you will come up with something of your own. Take a look at the many other beautiful pieces on her website, and if you’re intrigued, find a friend or get yourself a machine and see what you come up with. Nothing like coffee and art getting together!
A nod goes to the fabulous Helen Breil who sent me a link to this particular piece on the Beading Gem blog and website. Another nod goes to photographer Victor Wolansky who Kathleen praises for taking such a beautiful photograph of a particularly difficult piece.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Just the Clay
July 17, 2014 Inspirational Art
It’s certainly not going to be news that if you want to create variation in a piece, it can be done by strictly using the clay itself. Polymer is perfect for creating all types of color and textures! Here’s a straight-forward example by Nora Pero using various colors, translucency, visual texture, and color blending to create variations in her pinched petal form.
Lining up all these necklaces together leads us to another idea we can explore that we don’t see here, and that is the combination of the various petals into one necklace. Maybe those blues and greens together on one necklace, or a trio of the red, gold and fuchsia/yellow petals that alternate across around the neck. That sounds kind of yummy!
Petals:
Although Nora has been wonderfully focused on some glass and beading options of late, her Flickr pages have plenty of images showing further variations in mokume, crackle, and extruder cane decorated beads. In addition, you can get a tutorial on how to create these various petals in her Etsy shop. Fun 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.
Imbuing your pieces with energetic color has a lot to do with contrast. The colors do not necessarily have to be bold and bright, although bright colors have an inherent energy of their own, but rather they need to be a mix of warm and cool, bright and muted, or any combination of color characteristics that make the colors vie for dominance, visually.
The colors in this brooch by Pavla Cepelikova have a fun combination of bright and muted as well as cool and warm colors. By themselves, they would give this piece a moderate amount of energy. Applying the colors in stripes adds to the intensity of energy as variation in color alternates up and down those striped strips.
Her use of lines also adds a tremendous amount of energy. Not unlike the way they use lines in animation to denote when something is moving, she has added energetic lines around the petals as if they are shaking on the surface of the brooch. The combination of energetic color and lines makes for a very lively piece.
This combination of line and color energy seems to be a recent exploration of Pavla’s. You can see what she’s done with it so far on her Flickr photostream and in her Etsy shop.
Read More
Here’s one last example for this week of these incredible illustrative image canes we are seeing these days. This one uses the more familiar and common imagery of flowers which so many cane makers are inspired by. However, the way Jayne Dwyer creates her flower here makes it look like a painting, with color variation and details that are not very common in polymer clay flower canes.
Jayne employees outlining, which we saw at work in Claire’s piece on Monday, but here it is quite a bit more dramatic with its black and white outlines. The soft gradation of color plays a contrast to the hard black-and-white delineation around the flower. It makes it really pop. She also created a painterly background for the flower within the cane itself. The streaks of color are varied but create radiating lines that give an energized, dimensional feel to the petals.
And then she has these spots of color that pop up within those gradations. It’s very detailed and interesting to look at closely and imagine all the decisions she made to come up with this image. I don’t suppose the decisions are much different than one would make when painting, but in polymer, each decision takes some serious confidence and dedication to the image since how it will look is not going to be wholly apparent until after reduction.
Take a close-up look for yourself at the image in this cane or go to a bigger image on Facebook. You can also see more of the work Jayne does on her website.
Read More
Our Color Spotlight section of the Winter 2016 issue of The Polymer Arts was graced by Donna Kato, interview by Lindly Haunani. How amazing is that combination?! Donna let us in on her colored pencil experiments and her reasoning behind her approach. Although colored pencil on polymer is not new, it is always fascinating to see into the workings of an artistic mind and since this section focuses on color choices and inspiration, we got a peek at how this master choose colors for her explorations.
One piece that I was sent to consider including was this beautiful necklace you see here. We ended up focusing so much on the pencil work that there really wasn’t a place for this in the article but it certainly deserves a bit of attention. Each section of the necklace deals with one basic hue in two different values. The disparate placement offsets the regularity of each hue showcased in the same shape and the relative dark to light hue being basically the same within each color set. The delicious saturated colors don’t hurt it at all either.
The most active page to see what Donna has been up to in her own art looks to be her Facebook page although you can see some of her more honed work and learn from her wisdom by going over to check out her classes on CraftArtEdu.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Let’s play with color hue. Pick 2-3 colors–they can contrast, be analogous (next to each other on the color wheel) or simply be your favorites. Choose two variations of each color–different saturation (how pure a hue it is), values (dark or light), or tints/shades (additions of white/black.) Now use just these to create a new piece.
_________________________________________
Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners.
_________________________________________
Read MoreEarlier this week, I mentioned that you can avoid creating less-than-exciting pieces that use consistent repetition by adding variation or creating unusual or surprising visual impact. Well, today’s piece, created by jewelry artist Kathleen Nowak Tucci, has some serious impact while still using the same form, texture and accents repeated over and over. The impact of this piece comes from the gorgeous, shimmery color. There is a touch of variation in color, but I think this would still be eye-catching if it was all the same color. We sure do like our bright and shiny. Now, do you know what this is made from?
If you make your coffee with a Nespresso machine, then you might have recognized those colors from the capsules used in the appliance. Kathleen’s use of these started with a visit to a friend who used these. She was drawn to the beautiful colors and asked her friend to save the used ones. Now, she’s made a full-line of jewelry from these toss away cups.
I love that Kathleen has created something so beautiful from items we would normally toss out without a second thought. Well, that’s not wholly true. I bet polymer addicts would stop to admire the great colors and might have even wondered if they could be used in the studio. Actually, I know I saw some combination of these with polymer a while back. Although I could not find them just now, maybe you will come up with something of your own. Take a look at the many other beautiful pieces on her website, and if you’re intrigued, find a friend or get yourself a machine and see what you come up with. Nothing like coffee and art getting together!
A nod goes to the fabulous Helen Breil who sent me a link to this particular piece on the Beading Gem blog and website. Another nod goes to photographer Victor Wolansky who Kathleen praises for taking such a beautiful photograph of a particularly difficult piece.
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Read MoreIt’s certainly not going to be news that if you want to create variation in a piece, it can be done by strictly using the clay itself. Polymer is perfect for creating all types of color and textures! Here’s a straight-forward example by Nora Pero using various colors, translucency, visual texture, and color blending to create variations in her pinched petal form.
Lining up all these necklaces together leads us to another idea we can explore that we don’t see here, and that is the combination of the various petals into one necklace. Maybe those blues and greens together on one necklace, or a trio of the red, gold and fuchsia/yellow petals that alternate across around the neck. That sounds kind of yummy!
Petals:
Although Nora has been wonderfully focused on some glass and beading options of late, her Flickr pages have plenty of images showing further variations in mokume, crackle, and extruder cane decorated beads. In addition, you can get a tutorial on how to create these various petals in her Etsy shop. Fun 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