Pushing Faux Organics
September 2, 2014
Inspirational Art
Another article in the fall issue that could have had a lot more examples in it if we had the room was about playing with faux techniques. The ideas outlined in the article are about emulating something that you find in nature, but adjusting characteristics to create something that doesn’t exist. A number of fantastic artists contributed their versions of this with examples.
Page McNall contributed an example of faux wood. A small faux log to be exact, but that is hardly the end of her beyond-natural faux examples. She is definitely one of those exploratory artists I often talk about, never really settling into one form or style, but does gorgeous work in her variety of approaches. One of her newer explorations that I just love and would have liked to have included are these this faux semi-translucent organics. This is really pushing the idea of natural faux polymer. The pieces look like they could be something in nature, but I’m pretty sure there is nothing quite like the majority of these.
To get a better view of the individual pieces here, as well as her rather fascinating work, visit her Flickr page. And for more ideas on how to play with and push faux techniques, well, see the latest issue of The Polymer Arts!
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.
Lost in the Intricacy
March 10, 2014
Inspirational Art
I have, piling up in my Pinterst boards, pocket pages and research folders, all this really intricate, time consuming work that I’ve been wanting to share. I guess this will be the week to do that!
This first piece just fascinates me. I used to do quite a bit of carving, in all kinds of mediums. It’s extremely zen and therapeutic but I’ve done very little in polymer. That is probably a big reason why I like this piece so much. I could see its creator, Belarus’ Anna Anpilogova, spending hours carving out all this texture, lost in the emergence of the layers as she carved into the polymer over and over again. It’s got my fingers itching to try some myself!
Anna’s polymer work is quite tactile and intricate, usually with an organic or nature inspired theme. Her collection of work on her Flickr photostream and LiveJournal pages can get you as lost in a trance as I imagine doing all the carving would.
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.
Working with Random
February 4, 2014
Inspirational Art
Periodically you will come across a piece of art that looks like it was cobbled together randomly–the various elements are all different and there is no order to the placement or arrangement. When a piece is truly created with pure randomness, we tend to find it unappealing and often baffling. But then there are those pieces that look random and yet we find ourselves drawn to it anyways. There is some beauty or underlying order we sense in it. We find this quite often in natural settings where beauty can be found in what would seem to be a random arrangement of mountain peaks, of fallen and scattered leaves on a forest floor or of erratic tree branches reaching out in every direction. The reason such seemingly random and chance compositions are found to be beautiful rather than just an incomprehensible mess is because all the elements we are looking at have a purpose and follow an order dictated by the physics and life cycles of our world. This tends to be the same reason art work that looks random can still be beautiful and appealing–because the piece was created with purpose and the elements were chosen with an underlying theme that gives the elements cohesion.
If you look closely at a good piece of art that appears to have a random composition or random elements, there is usually a common thread (or two or three) that brings it all together. For example, this bracelet created by Donna Greenberg looks to have just a bunch of scattered, random elements laid around the flat surface but there are a couple of things that make it cohesive. What would you say that is?
There are two things here that I think are primary to making this piece work. One is the limited color palette which sticks with variations on blue and blue-green. Had there been a wider array of color, the piece would have appeared a bit more chaotic. Not that portraying a bit of chaos is always a bad things but what a different feel this would have to it!
The other thing I think brings this together is the flow of lines, all running in more or less the same way, undulating counter clockwise from the inside towards the outside on the bracelet’s surface. This makes it feel that all the random textures, stippling, embedded beads and many colored metallic flakes are moving around the piece in a coordinated dance. It also gives the bracelet a very graceful sense of movement one might not expect with so many random elements.
Donna works more with randomness than with well-ordered patterns but there is always a sense of purpose and connection between the elements in each piece she makes drawn from organic inspirations. Go ahead and have fun honing your eye on what makes randomness work in more of Donna’s work on her Flickr pages.
Thank you for supporting The Polymer Arts projects! Your purchases support the magazine, this blog and our upcoming “Best of” and “Workshop” books. To get even more out of our projects, subscribe, get our newsletter (see form on the left side of our home page), and follow us on Facebook.
Another article in the fall issue that could have had a lot more examples in it if we had the room was about playing with faux techniques. The ideas outlined in the article are about emulating something that you find in nature, but adjusting characteristics to create something that doesn’t exist. A number of fantastic artists contributed their versions of this with examples.
Page McNall contributed an example of faux wood. A small faux log to be exact, but that is hardly the end of her beyond-natural faux examples. She is definitely one of those exploratory artists I often talk about, never really settling into one form or style, but does gorgeous work in her variety of approaches. One of her newer explorations that I just love and would have liked to have included are these this faux semi-translucent organics. This is really pushing the idea of natural faux polymer. The pieces look like they could be something in nature, but I’m pretty sure there is nothing quite like the majority of these.
To get a better view of the individual pieces here, as well as her rather fascinating work, visit her Flickr page. And for more ideas on how to play with and push faux techniques, well, see the latest issue of The Polymer Arts!
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 have, piling up in my Pinterst boards, pocket pages and research folders, all this really intricate, time consuming work that I’ve been wanting to share. I guess this will be the week to do that!
This first piece just fascinates me. I used to do quite a bit of carving, in all kinds of mediums. It’s extremely zen and therapeutic but I’ve done very little in polymer. That is probably a big reason why I like this piece so much. I could see its creator, Belarus’ Anna Anpilogova, spending hours carving out all this texture, lost in the emergence of the layers as she carved into the polymer over and over again. It’s got my fingers itching to try some myself!
Anna’s polymer work is quite tactile and intricate, usually with an organic or nature inspired theme. Her collection of work on her Flickr photostream and LiveJournal pages can get you as lost in a trance as I imagine doing all the carving would.
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.
Periodically you will come across a piece of art that looks like it was cobbled together randomly–the various elements are all different and there is no order to the placement or arrangement. When a piece is truly created with pure randomness, we tend to find it unappealing and often baffling. But then there are those pieces that look random and yet we find ourselves drawn to it anyways. There is some beauty or underlying order we sense in it. We find this quite often in natural settings where beauty can be found in what would seem to be a random arrangement of mountain peaks, of fallen and scattered leaves on a forest floor or of erratic tree branches reaching out in every direction. The reason such seemingly random and chance compositions are found to be beautiful rather than just an incomprehensible mess is because all the elements we are looking at have a purpose and follow an order dictated by the physics and life cycles of our world. This tends to be the same reason art work that looks random can still be beautiful and appealing–because the piece was created with purpose and the elements were chosen with an underlying theme that gives the elements cohesion.
If you look closely at a good piece of art that appears to have a random composition or random elements, there is usually a common thread (or two or three) that brings it all together. For example, this bracelet created by Donna Greenberg looks to have just a bunch of scattered, random elements laid around the flat surface but there are a couple of things that make it cohesive. What would you say that is?
There are two things here that I think are primary to making this piece work. One is the limited color palette which sticks with variations on blue and blue-green. Had there been a wider array of color, the piece would have appeared a bit more chaotic. Not that portraying a bit of chaos is always a bad things but what a different feel this would have to it!
The other thing I think brings this together is the flow of lines, all running in more or less the same way, undulating counter clockwise from the inside towards the outside on the bracelet’s surface. This makes it feel that all the random textures, stippling, embedded beads and many colored metallic flakes are moving around the piece in a coordinated dance. It also gives the bracelet a very graceful sense of movement one might not expect with so many random elements.
Donna works more with randomness than with well-ordered patterns but there is always a sense of purpose and connection between the elements in each piece she makes drawn from organic inspirations. Go ahead and have fun honing your eye on what makes randomness work in more of Donna’s work on her Flickr pages.
Thank you for supporting The Polymer Arts projects! Your purchases support the magazine, this blog and our upcoming “Best of” and “Workshop” books. To get even more out of our projects, subscribe, get our newsletter (see form on the left side of our home page), and follow us on Facebook.
