Shimmer and Swirl
December 21, 2018
Inspirational Art
This bit of drama in silver is not, of course, polymer, but just look at the textures and possibilities!
The drama comes from the swirling motion initiated by the ammonite shell but this artist team, Sergey Toritsyn and Svetlana Larina, selling under the shop Art-Dreams on Livemaster, have ramped up the energy with a variety of textures and lines that move off the central body of the work. The bezeled stones help to put the brakes on this just enough to keep it in the barely contained state but that just adds to the beauty and satisfying feeling of the movement in the piece. The shimmer of the ammonite interior also helps to anchor our eyes towards the center so that our eyes wander from the sparkle and shimmer to the swirling wire to the stones and back to center again.
The piece is a great example of well-composed movement in jewelry as well as being an intriguing piece to just visually investigate. From the lined-up granulation in the center to the bits of color under the wires near the base of where most of them start (enamel, I think), there is just a ton of detail to take in and admire.
This is the most complex piece of theirs that I found but they have plenty of other work to admire on their Livemaster page here.
Circularly Supported Rectangles
November 23, 2018
Inspirational Art
I hope all my fellow US folks had a beautiful Thanksgiving with lots of family and maybe not too much food. How can you do all that shopping today if you’re still stuffed from the day before? No shopping for me today. I’m running off with the family to enjoy some downtime. I thought I’d leave you with these little beauties to contemplate.
These are by Cecilie Hveding, a metalsmith and enamel jewelry artist in Norway. She works in a number of different styles but this set really struck me as having a lot of parallels to the approaches often taken in polymer. Layering her materials, much as we often do in polymer, she has really showcased the color and luminescence of enamel on simple rectangular pendants. What works as a bail is a beautifully simple solution to keeping the clean lines and balanced shapes of the almost picture-frame-like compositions. The circles are not only functional, allowing a cord to be looped through for a simple pendant connection, but they also contrast with the dominance of straight lines, then allow an echo of that shape in the dangling bead at the end which works with the open circle as a kind of bookend set for the design.
So if you’re not out shopping or having to work today and want to discover a new artist, jump over to Cecilie’s website to look at the broad range of her work.
Disconnected in Kentucky
October 25, 2013
Inspirational Art
My internet connection out here at Mammoth Cave has been challenging, so this is going to be brief. I had a nice attendee’s husband drive me into town so I could get this little bit posted. (Thank you Pat Lacy & John Donica!)
I haven’t had much time to search for a piece today, but I have this box by C.A. Therien I found earlier in the week that I wanted to share. Believe it or not, this is polymer–but doesn’t it look like wonderful enamel?
Charlene (C.A.) has had her hands in quite a number of projects the last couple years. Her Etsy shop is on vacation but her you can still check out her Memorial Beads website.
Please forgive me for the brief post and if I manage not to get on tomorrow, know all is well and I will be back soon!
Outside Inspiration: Where we can take Faux Enamel
May 17, 2013
Inspirational Art
So, as mentioned in yesterday’s post, I want to introduce you to an enamel artist who did work that could inspire you to try something a little different with your own work.
Marilyn Druin (1941-2001) was an enamel artist of unusual vision, enthusiasm and drive. She constantly pushed her medium, ultimately creating the beautiful but time-consuming and strenuous processes that put her on a level far beyond the majority of her colleagues. The reason I wanted to share her work is partly to inspire those of you who work with faux enamel to look at possible variations. The other reason is to hopefully inspire you to push your work, challenge yourself and realize the huge rewards that Marilyn’s kind of commitment to her craft can bring you … rewards in finding an unexpected beauty you can truly, uniquely create.
Take a look at these two pins below. Marilyn did a lot more than just pins … cups, necklaces, sculpture … but these have some great, easy to see examples of her unusual enamel texture. I have no idea how she did some of this in enamel but I do have some very exciting ideas about how to do it in polymer.
I see combining textured opaque and layered translucent clays with liquid polymer glazes to get effects like some of these. I have not seen a lot of people do things that looks quite like this in polymer but its seems like a rather obvious direction for faux enamel … layering polymer in shimmering, translucent colors with texture underneath or just aiming to emulate enamel with clay instead of liquid.
I think sometimes our influence from all that we see of other people’s polymer art may actually limit our ability to think beyond what is already being done … perhaps that is the reason for the dominance of faux enamel created in single swathes of colored liquid polymer.
When I first started working with polymer, I didn’t see hardly any work. I was self-taught from sites like Glass Attic and a couple books so my exposure was limited. I did some pretty different things back then and would often be asked at shows where my ideas came from. “The ether,” I would say. But now I find my designs are often reflective of the kind of work I’ve been looking at … and I look at a ton these days. I’ve been feeling overly influenced by the immersion necessary to do this blog and the magazine. It can’t be helped. But I do find I am not happy with my designs because of it. So recently, I have been consciously forcing myself to break past or even erase/remove portions of my designs that I know are from other polymer artists’ work. I am much happier with the results when I do so. I find my mind starts wandering back into that ignorant, child-like portion of my imagination that lets me create work that feels much more my own. It can be hard to stay there though.
My point is, it can be so very advantageous to push your work beyond what you see other people doing. Combine techniques and approaches. And look at other forms of art. Because we can’t, usually, directly copy art made from other materials, we have to translate and filter it through ourselves. That should influence your work to go in directions that others aren’t going in and bring out your own voice. And that is a wonderful, beautiful thing.
In the meantime, treat yourself to a few minutes (or more!) looking through Marilyn’s gallery of work. Even if you don’t do faux enamel, her textures and colors are just stunning–they could inspire any kind of artist, dont’ you think?
The Faux Enamel Options
May 16, 2013
Inspirational Art
First, because people are waiting to hear, we’d like to announce that the winner of the Sample Cosmic Ceramic project is … Karen Donald! Congrats!
Thank you all for chiming in on the faux versus variation question and taking part in the giveaway. I’m going to line up more giveaways so we can do this regularly. Write me with any suggestions for things you’d like me to try to get for these contests. Or if you’re a retailer of any kind and have something you’d like to giveaway from your shop, let me know. Write me directly at sbray@thepolymerarts.com
So … it would be remiss of me this week not to bring up what may be the faux techniques most widely experimented with when it comes to emulating other art forms–enamel. The common approach usually involves liquid polymer and alcohol inks and/or mica powders. The challenge tends to be in creating a base that has borders and/or channels to hold in and control the faux enamel. And there are a lot of different approaches for this.
At the beginning of the month, we visited Eugena’s artwork … she uses wire as her loose borders. It’s a gorgeous effect. It does take precision and patience, well worth the work, but isn’t for everyone. My favorite is the wax impression technique (See the Winter 2011 issue of The Polymer Arts magazine for the tutorial on this) because carving the wax to create the negative design has endless possibilities and there is nothing I’ve found that allows finer detail. But if you want to try something more straight forward, take a look at these “molds” cut into erasers and clay by Madrid’s Fabi.
She briefly explains the process on her Flickr page (although I think it was sent through a translator as it has some ‘interesting’ terms.) The advantage of erasers is the crispness of the lines although curves have to be more difficult to cut. I think her “gouging” tools must be engraving tools. You can get an inexpensive set at art and craft stores if you want to get into this. They can be used to easily cut into cured clay for other effects as well.
One of the things I wonder is whether we have really pushed faux enamel enough. I think there are possibilities, especially with the translucent clays, that we haven’t really seen. I’ve been playing with an idea myself but it’s not quite ready for prime time. However, tomorrow I am going to show you an artist that I think will knock your socks off, not just because it’s gorgeous work but because of the possibilities it shows us as polymer artists. She worked in real enamel and metal but the way it’s done, it actually reminds me of polymer and could be done in a way that would really push what we do with faux enamel right now. Intrigued? Well, tune in tomorrow …
This bit of drama in silver is not, of course, polymer, but just look at the textures and possibilities!
The drama comes from the swirling motion initiated by the ammonite shell but this artist team, Sergey Toritsyn and Svetlana Larina, selling under the shop Art-Dreams on Livemaster, have ramped up the energy with a variety of textures and lines that move off the central body of the work. The bezeled stones help to put the brakes on this just enough to keep it in the barely contained state but that just adds to the beauty and satisfying feeling of the movement in the piece. The shimmer of the ammonite interior also helps to anchor our eyes towards the center so that our eyes wander from the sparkle and shimmer to the swirling wire to the stones and back to center again.
The piece is a great example of well-composed movement in jewelry as well as being an intriguing piece to just visually investigate. From the lined-up granulation in the center to the bits of color under the wires near the base of where most of them start (enamel, I think), there is just a ton of detail to take in and admire.
This is the most complex piece of theirs that I found but they have plenty of other work to admire on their Livemaster page here.
Read MoreI hope all my fellow US folks had a beautiful Thanksgiving with lots of family and maybe not too much food. How can you do all that shopping today if you’re still stuffed from the day before? No shopping for me today. I’m running off with the family to enjoy some downtime. I thought I’d leave you with these little beauties to contemplate.
These are by Cecilie Hveding, a metalsmith and enamel jewelry artist in Norway. She works in a number of different styles but this set really struck me as having a lot of parallels to the approaches often taken in polymer. Layering her materials, much as we often do in polymer, she has really showcased the color and luminescence of enamel on simple rectangular pendants. What works as a bail is a beautifully simple solution to keeping the clean lines and balanced shapes of the almost picture-frame-like compositions. The circles are not only functional, allowing a cord to be looped through for a simple pendant connection, but they also contrast with the dominance of straight lines, then allow an echo of that shape in the dangling bead at the end which works with the open circle as a kind of bookend set for the design.
So if you’re not out shopping or having to work today and want to discover a new artist, jump over to Cecilie’s website to look at the broad range of her work.
Read MoreMy internet connection out here at Mammoth Cave has been challenging, so this is going to be brief. I had a nice attendee’s husband drive me into town so I could get this little bit posted. (Thank you Pat Lacy & John Donica!)
I haven’t had much time to search for a piece today, but I have this box by C.A. Therien I found earlier in the week that I wanted to share. Believe it or not, this is polymer–but doesn’t it look like wonderful enamel?
Charlene (C.A.) has had her hands in quite a number of projects the last couple years. Her Etsy shop is on vacation but her you can still check out her Memorial Beads website.
Please forgive me for the brief post and if I manage not to get on tomorrow, know all is well and I will be back soon!
Read MoreSo, as mentioned in yesterday’s post, I want to introduce you to an enamel artist who did work that could inspire you to try something a little different with your own work.
Marilyn Druin (1941-2001) was an enamel artist of unusual vision, enthusiasm and drive. She constantly pushed her medium, ultimately creating the beautiful but time-consuming and strenuous processes that put her on a level far beyond the majority of her colleagues. The reason I wanted to share her work is partly to inspire those of you who work with faux enamel to look at possible variations. The other reason is to hopefully inspire you to push your work, challenge yourself and realize the huge rewards that Marilyn’s kind of commitment to her craft can bring you … rewards in finding an unexpected beauty you can truly, uniquely create.
Take a look at these two pins below. Marilyn did a lot more than just pins … cups, necklaces, sculpture … but these have some great, easy to see examples of her unusual enamel texture. I have no idea how she did some of this in enamel but I do have some very exciting ideas about how to do it in polymer.
I see combining textured opaque and layered translucent clays with liquid polymer glazes to get effects like some of these. I have not seen a lot of people do things that looks quite like this in polymer but its seems like a rather obvious direction for faux enamel … layering polymer in shimmering, translucent colors with texture underneath or just aiming to emulate enamel with clay instead of liquid.
I think sometimes our influence from all that we see of other people’s polymer art may actually limit our ability to think beyond what is already being done … perhaps that is the reason for the dominance of faux enamel created in single swathes of colored liquid polymer.
When I first started working with polymer, I didn’t see hardly any work. I was self-taught from sites like Glass Attic and a couple books so my exposure was limited. I did some pretty different things back then and would often be asked at shows where my ideas came from. “The ether,” I would say. But now I find my designs are often reflective of the kind of work I’ve been looking at … and I look at a ton these days. I’ve been feeling overly influenced by the immersion necessary to do this blog and the magazine. It can’t be helped. But I do find I am not happy with my designs because of it. So recently, I have been consciously forcing myself to break past or even erase/remove portions of my designs that I know are from other polymer artists’ work. I am much happier with the results when I do so. I find my mind starts wandering back into that ignorant, child-like portion of my imagination that lets me create work that feels much more my own. It can be hard to stay there though.
My point is, it can be so very advantageous to push your work beyond what you see other people doing. Combine techniques and approaches. And look at other forms of art. Because we can’t, usually, directly copy art made from other materials, we have to translate and filter it through ourselves. That should influence your work to go in directions that others aren’t going in and bring out your own voice. And that is a wonderful, beautiful thing.
In the meantime, treat yourself to a few minutes (or more!) looking through Marilyn’s gallery of work. Even if you don’t do faux enamel, her textures and colors are just stunning–they could inspire any kind of artist, dont’ you think?
Read MoreFirst, because people are waiting to hear, we’d like to announce that the winner of the Sample Cosmic Ceramic project is … Karen Donald! Congrats!
Thank you all for chiming in on the faux versus variation question and taking part in the giveaway. I’m going to line up more giveaways so we can do this regularly. Write me with any suggestions for things you’d like me to try to get for these contests. Or if you’re a retailer of any kind and have something you’d like to giveaway from your shop, let me know. Write me directly at sbray@thepolymerarts.com
So … it would be remiss of me this week not to bring up what may be the faux techniques most widely experimented with when it comes to emulating other art forms–enamel. The common approach usually involves liquid polymer and alcohol inks and/or mica powders. The challenge tends to be in creating a base that has borders and/or channels to hold in and control the faux enamel. And there are a lot of different approaches for this.
At the beginning of the month, we visited Eugena’s artwork … she uses wire as her loose borders. It’s a gorgeous effect. It does take precision and patience, well worth the work, but isn’t for everyone. My favorite is the wax impression technique (See the Winter 2011 issue of The Polymer Arts magazine for the tutorial on this) because carving the wax to create the negative design has endless possibilities and there is nothing I’ve found that allows finer detail. But if you want to try something more straight forward, take a look at these “molds” cut into erasers and clay by Madrid’s Fabi.
She briefly explains the process on her Flickr page (although I think it was sent through a translator as it has some ‘interesting’ terms.) The advantage of erasers is the crispness of the lines although curves have to be more difficult to cut. I think her “gouging” tools must be engraving tools. You can get an inexpensive set at art and craft stores if you want to get into this. They can be used to easily cut into cured clay for other effects as well.
One of the things I wonder is whether we have really pushed faux enamel enough. I think there are possibilities, especially with the translucent clays, that we haven’t really seen. I’ve been playing with an idea myself but it’s not quite ready for prime time. However, tomorrow I am going to show you an artist that I think will knock your socks off, not just because it’s gorgeous work but because of the possibilities it shows us as polymer artists. She worked in real enamel and metal but the way it’s done, it actually reminds me of polymer and could be done in a way that would really push what we do with faux enamel right now. Intrigued? Well, tune in tomorrow …
Read More