Searing Color
January 24, 2018
Inspirational Art
Saturation is the color characteristic that defines how pure a color is, how far it is from its base hue, with full saturation being a pure hue. Most colors in nature have contrasting colors or black and white mixed in, toning them down. But when the color hasn’t been toned down at all, it can be really striking, or really garish, depending on how the colors are combined.
Here, Natasa Hozjan Kutin has managed to create a palette with full saturation and using very bright colors without any garishness. In fact, it looks quite sophisticated as well as just stunningly beautiful. It’s like a sunny day and the best colors of a sunset, all rolled into one piece.
The Skinner blends help with the harmonious feel because we aren’t cutting quickly from one color to the other but rather we get all the other colors in between in a gradual transition. This is how light works in nature as well so it feels soft and organic instead of jarring.
Graduated color dominates much of Natasa’s work. You can see more of her softly sophisticated pieces on her Flickr photostream and in her Etsy shop.
Variation on Owls in Autumn
October 23, 2015
Inspirational Art
You may recall a certain blog post at the beginning of the year with a clever necklace much like the one you see here but white and with a barn owl. Well, that wasn’t the only owl necklace of that kind she created. She took that and created a very lively variation on the design.
Now, I usually wouldn’t post the same type of design twice in a year, but there is something to be said about seeing how an artist stretches a great design. And it goes with our Fall color palette theme. And it’s really beautiful. So …
If you didn’t see or don’t recall the first post on the owl necklace design by Dorota Kaszczyszyn of VaniLlamaArt, you can jump back to it by clicking here before we go any farther. See how the structure is the same but she’s opened things up and moved from a minimal neutral palette to something wonderfully rich. The use of Skinner blends throughout gives a liveliness to the creature, with the illusion of light hitting what would be its shoulder wings and that blue on the body echoed on the end feathers. It’s a beautiful departure from the tight, stylized design of the first, which is equally stunning but with a different feel.
She has also recently created a metallic owl to add to her family which goes in the very opposite direction being very stylized and all silver. You can jump to this page on her blog to see all of them but do dive into the posts as well, especially the one on the piece we are looking at today as she reveals how she designed and created the smooth transition in Skinner blend beads. Click on the image to go directly there.
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Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners:
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Graduated Colored Cups
February 23, 2014
Technique tutorials
Here we see another limited palette using gradients of the same color for the theme. Even though flowers lend themselves to this technique, you certainly don’t have to make a hyacinth flower with it. Of course, we can’t think about gradient colors without thinking of Skinner blends. The gradient used here is made by adding varying amounts of white to the base color, but you could also go in the other direction, and add blacks, which would darken the gradient. You could also try analogous blends, using a limited color palette of colors that are near each other on the color wheel.
The artist who made these grape hyacinth pins is Kellie Mowat. She has tutorials that make use of repetition and a limited color palette, as well as tutorials for lots of other mediums. She also has some tutorials posted on YouTube for all of you visual learners out there.
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.
Real Leaves, Real Easy
November 20, 2012
Technique tutorials, Tips and Tricks
The leaves in the brooches below look deceptively real. For good reason. They are the result of direct impressions from real leaves. That and a little paint to bring out the veins. It doesn’t get much more real than that. Except for the real thing of course.
The clay used by artist Camille Young here is actually Lumina. It’s a translucent polymer resin clay that air dries. You color it with acrylic or oil based paints. But, this is just as easy to replicate in polymer and there’s no mixing in of paint into the clay. Choose a leaf color or skinner blend a few colors of clay together, then press in a real leaf, bake, apply acrylic paint to get it into the veins and then wipe off the paint on the raised surface.
Camille documents her creation of these leaves in Lumina on her blog here (scroll down when you get to the page … she has a large header). Just follow the steps except bake the polymer where she says “let it dry thoroughly”.
Grand idea!
Mudpile Mokume Gane
June 30, 2012
Inspirational Art, Technique tutorials
If you read the “Polymer Resurrection Workshop” article in the last issue of The Polymer Arts, you saw how easy it is to make successful mokume gane from scrap. I’ve been hearing from a lot of people who have been taking this scrap approach so when I ran across this tutorial by Elizabeth Campbell,, I thought I really ought to share. Here’s a resulting piece from the technique:
This is a a fun variation on the mokume gane challenge that does not require sorting the clay at all. You just use your “mud pile.” It’s perfect for leftover canes pieces and the little bits of clay you have at the bottom of your scrap bin.
If you are getting into the Bargello technique from that same article, Elizabeth has a quick overview on creating a Skinner blend Bargello sheet as well.
Carol Simmons on the Beauty of Bargello
June 18, 2012
Inspirational Art
In the last issue of The Polymer Arts, I used Bargello as a method to show how you can turn any scrap clay into a successful project with just about any technique.
Carol Simmons also fell back to the Bargello technique when looking for something to do with extra Skinner Blends.
In her blog post from 5/4/12 she writes:
“I returned to working with Bargello designs when I started casting about for things I could do with Skinner Blends I already had on hand. This time, after I stacked my blends I sliced the stack into very thin sheets and then into narrow strips. (Yes, I used my slicer.) I arranged these strips like fabric to create flat Bargello patterned veneers to put on pre-formed pendant blanks.”
Her inspiration actually came from Laura Liska, whose wonderfully executed beads are actually spaced Bargello.
Check out Carol’s blog post for the full story. http://carolsimmonsdesigns.com/blog/
Saturation is the color characteristic that defines how pure a color is, how far it is from its base hue, with full saturation being a pure hue. Most colors in nature have contrasting colors or black and white mixed in, toning them down. But when the color hasn’t been toned down at all, it can be really striking, or really garish, depending on how the colors are combined.
Here, Natasa Hozjan Kutin has managed to create a palette with full saturation and using very bright colors without any garishness. In fact, it looks quite sophisticated as well as just stunningly beautiful. It’s like a sunny day and the best colors of a sunset, all rolled into one piece.
The Skinner blends help with the harmonious feel because we aren’t cutting quickly from one color to the other but rather we get all the other colors in between in a gradual transition. This is how light works in nature as well so it feels soft and organic instead of jarring.
Graduated color dominates much of Natasa’s work. You can see more of her softly sophisticated pieces on her Flickr photostream and in her Etsy shop.
Read MoreYou may recall a certain blog post at the beginning of the year with a clever necklace much like the one you see here but white and with a barn owl. Well, that wasn’t the only owl necklace of that kind she created. She took that and created a very lively variation on the design.
Now, I usually wouldn’t post the same type of design twice in a year, but there is something to be said about seeing how an artist stretches a great design. And it goes with our Fall color palette theme. And it’s really beautiful. So …
If you didn’t see or don’t recall the first post on the owl necklace design by Dorota Kaszczyszyn of VaniLlamaArt, you can jump back to it by clicking here before we go any farther. See how the structure is the same but she’s opened things up and moved from a minimal neutral palette to something wonderfully rich. The use of Skinner blends throughout gives a liveliness to the creature, with the illusion of light hitting what would be its shoulder wings and that blue on the body echoed on the end feathers. It’s a beautiful departure from the tight, stylized design of the first, which is equally stunning but with a different feel.
She has also recently created a metallic owl to add to her family which goes in the very opposite direction being very stylized and all silver. You can jump to this page on her blog to see all of them but do dive into the posts as well, especially the one on the piece we are looking at today as she reveals how she designed and created the smooth transition in Skinner blend beads. Click on the image to go directly there.
___________________________________________
Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners:
___________________________________________
Read More
Here we see another limited palette using gradients of the same color for the theme. Even though flowers lend themselves to this technique, you certainly don’t have to make a hyacinth flower with it. Of course, we can’t think about gradient colors without thinking of Skinner blends. The gradient used here is made by adding varying amounts of white to the base color, but you could also go in the other direction, and add blacks, which would darken the gradient. You could also try analogous blends, using a limited color palette of colors that are near each other on the color wheel.
The artist who made these grape hyacinth pins is Kellie Mowat. She has tutorials that make use of repetition and a limited color palette, as well as tutorials for lots of other mediums. She also has some tutorials posted on YouTube for all of you visual learners out there.
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.
The leaves in the brooches below look deceptively real. For good reason. They are the result of direct impressions from real leaves. That and a little paint to bring out the veins. It doesn’t get much more real than that. Except for the real thing of course.
The clay used by artist Camille Young here is actually Lumina. It’s a translucent polymer resin clay that air dries. You color it with acrylic or oil based paints. But, this is just as easy to replicate in polymer and there’s no mixing in of paint into the clay. Choose a leaf color or skinner blend a few colors of clay together, then press in a real leaf, bake, apply acrylic paint to get it into the veins and then wipe off the paint on the raised surface.
Camille documents her creation of these leaves in Lumina on her blog here (scroll down when you get to the page … she has a large header). Just follow the steps except bake the polymer where she says “let it dry thoroughly”.
Grand idea!
Read MoreIf you read the “Polymer Resurrection Workshop” article in the last issue of The Polymer Arts, you saw how easy it is to make successful mokume gane from scrap. I’ve been hearing from a lot of people who have been taking this scrap approach so when I ran across this tutorial by Elizabeth Campbell,, I thought I really ought to share. Here’s a resulting piece from the technique:
This is a a fun variation on the mokume gane challenge that does not require sorting the clay at all. You just use your “mud pile.” It’s perfect for leftover canes pieces and the little bits of clay you have at the bottom of your scrap bin.
If you are getting into the Bargello technique from that same article, Elizabeth has a quick overview on creating a Skinner blend Bargello sheet as well.
Read MoreIn the last issue of The Polymer Arts, I used Bargello as a method to show how you can turn any scrap clay into a successful project with just about any technique.
Carol Simmons also fell back to the Bargello technique when looking for something to do with extra Skinner Blends.
In her blog post from 5/4/12 she writes:
“I returned to working with Bargello designs when I started casting about for things I could do with Skinner Blends I already had on hand. This time, after I stacked my blends I sliced the stack into very thin sheets and then into narrow strips. (Yes, I used my slicer.) I arranged these strips like fabric to create flat Bargello patterned veneers to put on pre-formed pendant blanks.”
Her inspiration actually came from Laura Liska, whose wonderfully executed beads are actually spaced Bargello.
Check out Carol’s blog post for the full story. http://carolsimmonsdesigns.com/blog/
Read More
