A Mosaic Tease
June 20, 2018
Inspirational Art
One more little tease before I go off. This is a brand-new Christi Friesen piece she created just for the new book, Polymer Art Projects—Organics, for which we will have discounted pre-sale opportunities when I get back in a couple of weeks.
Christi has been playing around a lot with mosaics and shares her techniques for creating polymer mosaic pieces and then applying them on variously shaped surfaces. This covered tin box is a textural jungle gym for the fingers. She mixes the busy, hard-edged mosaic pieces with the soft, organic flowing shapes and surface variations. This is all done over a tin box. Her tutorial is wonderfully detailed and allows some room for those people who like to change things up a bit as they go along, making their own unique version. Which, I think, is the end goal of working through tutorials—to learn the skills to make your own unique, self-expressive work. All the tutorials in this book will give you that opportunity if that’s what you want.
I thought it was also apropos to share this particular piece because Christi’s inspiration for this is Gaudi, as in Antoni Gaudí whose work can be found all over Barcelona. And that is exactly where I’m heading to tomorrow! For three days I’m going to take in all the Gaudi and fabulous Spanish food I can manage. So with that, I leave you in the hands of my generous artist friends, starting with Christi guest-blogging on Friday. ¡Hasta luego!
See more of Christi’s mosaics on her website and stay tuned here or get our newsletter, which you can sign up for on our website here, to be one of the first to hear when the new books are ready to order.
Illustrative Illusion
November 4, 2014
Inspirational Art
Yesterday we looked at the depth achieved through applying unique polymer techniques that allow for a smooth surface to look like it has variations in the depth of that surface. But this can also be done with some good standard methods of optical illusion as well.
MaryKot created this pendant for a challenge using grays on the Parole De Pate blog. When you first glance at the piece you might think there are over a half dozen round elements sunk into the surface. Then like me (and I don’t have the best vision), you might have thought all the circles were just caned illusions. Then you realize some are sunk, and some are just color change. Or value change to be precise. It’s the change in value that gives the illusion of depth. In this case, it’s also well placed, as the darker value in the flower is toward the thicker center, where a cut out in the clay surface would look darker, and it gets lighter towards the edge, which is just about right, although it would get kind of Escher-esque if the black inset circles were more apparent. But the change in value and the nicely balanced design makes this a good example of a illustrative optical illusion.
Go back to our own week on the study of gray starting early in October for more on the use of value and illusion. You can see more MaryKot on her Flickr pages and her blog.
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.
One more little tease before I go off. This is a brand-new Christi Friesen piece she created just for the new book, Polymer Art Projects—Organics, for which we will have discounted pre-sale opportunities when I get back in a couple of weeks.
Christi has been playing around a lot with mosaics and shares her techniques for creating polymer mosaic pieces and then applying them on variously shaped surfaces. This covered tin box is a textural jungle gym for the fingers. She mixes the busy, hard-edged mosaic pieces with the soft, organic flowing shapes and surface variations. This is all done over a tin box. Her tutorial is wonderfully detailed and allows some room for those people who like to change things up a bit as they go along, making their own unique version. Which, I think, is the end goal of working through tutorials—to learn the skills to make your own unique, self-expressive work. All the tutorials in this book will give you that opportunity if that’s what you want.
I thought it was also apropos to share this particular piece because Christi’s inspiration for this is Gaudi, as in Antoni Gaudí whose work can be found all over Barcelona. And that is exactly where I’m heading to tomorrow! For three days I’m going to take in all the Gaudi and fabulous Spanish food I can manage. So with that, I leave you in the hands of my generous artist friends, starting with Christi guest-blogging on Friday. ¡Hasta luego!
See more of Christi’s mosaics on her website and stay tuned here or get our newsletter, which you can sign up for on our website here, to be one of the first to hear when the new books are ready to order.
Read MoreYesterday we looked at the depth achieved through applying unique polymer techniques that allow for a smooth surface to look like it has variations in the depth of that surface. But this can also be done with some good standard methods of optical illusion as well.
MaryKot created this pendant for a challenge using grays on the Parole De Pate blog. When you first glance at the piece you might think there are over a half dozen round elements sunk into the surface. Then like me (and I don’t have the best vision), you might have thought all the circles were just caned illusions. Then you realize some are sunk, and some are just color change. Or value change to be precise. It’s the change in value that gives the illusion of depth. In this case, it’s also well placed, as the darker value in the flower is toward the thicker center, where a cut out in the clay surface would look darker, and it gets lighter towards the edge, which is just about right, although it would get kind of Escher-esque if the black inset circles were more apparent. But the change in value and the nicely balanced design makes this a good example of a illustrative optical illusion.
Go back to our own week on the study of gray starting early in October for more on the use of value and illusion. You can see more MaryKot on her Flickr pages and her blog.
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.
