There Be Creepy Crawlies Here
October 26, 2015 Inspirational Art
It’s almost Halloween and I had been considering a dark beauty theme this week, but the real world has, as it so often does, presented me with another source of inspiration for this week. It is no less frightful, though, let me tell you.
Here in California, where I spend about half my time, we have found ourselves in a very scary house. No, really … it’s quite unsettling here. It’s not haunted exactly, although the frightening presence within the walls, unseen for years but slowly taking over, is pretty spooky stuff. Its was revealed when this strange spongy whiteness came creeping out into a closet, taking over a stack of my dear man’s t-shirt collection and his shoe rack. An inspector came out, looking very much like a guy from Ghostbusters with his large beeping machines and funny probes, and after running them back and forth across the suspect wall, determined that, yes, the house was possessed … by a myriad number of mold types and other fungus. So, guess what is happening suddenly while I am neck-deep in editing and layout, trying to get the next issue of The Polymer Arts together? We are being run out of our house.
So, I have my mind on mold. Which brought Jasmyne Graybill to mind. She had the honor of being the very first artist featured on this blog back in 2012. Because she creates these polymer clay textures in a context in which we see it as an unwanted growth, it appears rather disgusting to us. But look closely at this plate. If you recreated that texture on a bracelet or as a constrained band around a vase, we’d think it were quite lovely. So, it’s not the texture that is inherently repulsive, it’s just our knowledge of what it represents. Beautiful textures can be found in even the creepiest of natures organisms.
I am presently trying to see the beauty in the natural organisms that are invading the house, but I have to say, even though I do find beauty in all forms of decay, I have now come to terms with the fact that I do still prefer it stay outside and away from our apparel, at the very least.
That is my spooky-themed story right now, and as soon as I finish writing this I must get back to boxing things up so I can move operations back to Colorado tomorrow. So I’ll be on the road tomorrow and Wednesday, but by then we should be ready to reveal the Winter issue’s cover. It’s quite dramatic if we do say so ourselves. Stay tuned for that not-so-spooky installment of “The Polymer Zone”. And if you find yourself attracted by the beautiful fungal texture here, take a look at Jasmyne’s collection on her website.
___________________________________________
Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners:
___________________________________________
The Ups and Downs of Summer
July 20, 2015 Inspirational Art
In the northern hemisphere we are in the midst of summer, but Mother Nature is showing her many sides from hot and still to muggy and stormy, from tornadoes to floods to hurricanes. Down in the southern hemisphere, summer days are a distant memory, but nonetheless, summery colors are making a surge on the pages I’ve been visiting.
Lillian de Vries created this pendant with its interesting visual and tactile texture as inspiration for a summer challenge on Craftliners.com, a blog for the European wholesale company Craftlines, for which Lillian is a designer. The colors are mostly warm but delicate with a scattering of dark speckles falling out of a cooling ceiling of blue. It strikes me as a visual interpretation of a summer memory with its up and down days scattered through the memories of hot afternoons and those thankfully cool mornings.
Lillian plays with all kinds of texture, both visual and tactile, as well as stopping to create miniature and faux foods here and there. If you’re have a gratefully cool morning hiding from the heat, or are down under dreaming of warmer days, make a temperature appropriate beverage and escape into the creative wanderings on her blog and Craftliner’s pages.
Controlled Ripples
September 24, 2014 Inspirational Art
We’ve looked at a few rather free-form versions of rippling, but ripples can also be well controlled and stylized while maintaining that similarly energized feel of movement.
The pins that emerged in The Broken Internet Project had a lot of controlled, but high-energy lines in the designs, most likely due to their inspiration being a pin by the meticulous Dan Cormier, a pin that had a zigzag line (a cousin to the ripple, you could say) through the center of it. I loved Cornelia Brockstedt’s interpretation with both a controlled rippling Skinner blend and a silhouette of a ripple inserted next to it. Calm, but energized. It’s almost the definition of that.
If you never had the chance to see the whole Broken Internet Project results, be sure to jump over to The Cutting Edge’s Facebook page to see them all together. And, for more by the fabulous Cornelia Brockstedt, take a look at her website or her Flickr pages for her latest pieces.
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.
More Fun with Extruders
September 13, 2014 Inspirational Art
So after a week of extruder contemplation, have you gone into the studio to try out some new ideas yourself? Well, if not, but you’re anxious to try something out, here are a few ideas for you.
A shaped cane with no background fill? Is that possible? According to Lilu of Russia, you can do this with an extruder. How is that possible? Even our brave artist here can’t say how this works, but can show us successful results. The caveat is that you lose about half your clay to scraps as the ends come out mangled. But, with so many scrap cane techniques to put those towards, that might not be the worse thing to happen.
For those of you who want something more straightforward and less experimental, try these extruded snake surface designs with graduated colors created by Lucy Struncova. No real mysteries here … just extrude small snakes in graduated colors (if you’ve not done that before, go here for the classic tutorial on creating rainbow snakes with an extruder), lay them side by side, use the edge of a credit card, or long thin needle tool to impress the lines perpendicular to the snakes and cut out shapes as desired. A quick easy way to get a surface design with a range of colors and complex looking texture.
Or, you can do both! Roll your scrap ends from the background-less extruded cane through the pasta machine, punch a stack of discs to put back into the extruder, extrude snakes to your heart’s content and make Lucy’s snake and line textured sheets. Then accent them with cane slices. Don’t you love how versatile polymer can be? Even using the same stack of clay through several techniques.
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.
Names for Everything
July 2, 2014 Inspirational Art
I have to bring up Christine Damm this week since the first time I ever mentioned naming on this blog was in reference to her shop name–“Stories They Tell”. It’s simple, but really effective, and she also names all her pieces to reflect her thoughts on the work. This one is a happy piece called All That Jazz. The name definitely pushes you towards considering the more musical parallels the colors, shapes and lines convey.
So what does your art, your shop, and (if different) your business names tell others? What do other artist’s shop and business names say to you? These are great questions to ask yourself if you are looking to start something new or change things up in where and how you sell your work.
Find out more about Christine’s work as well as checking out more unusual and story conveying names 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.
Stack ’em Up
February 12, 2014 Inspirational Art
Stacking layers of polymer clay can be a new way of looking at this material sculpturally as well as way to combine and reveal color. Spain’s Natalia García de Leániz (known as Tatana on Flickr) makes these chunky polymer beads by stacking the sliced clay and making bold bracelets with these large design elements.
As Nataila says, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” She works with her husband, Daniel Torres, in an “artnership” where they share ideas and yet they work in different, complementary or even opposite styles. Natalia makes all of her work in polymer clay, frequently working with textures and paint effects on clay. There are some tutorials on her website (and of CraftArtEdu) as well as a lot of additional photographs of her work. They plan to be at EuroSynergy in Malta this year, and if you want an excuse to travel to Madrid, Spain, the couple holds workshops in their studio and throughout Europe!
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.
It’s almost Halloween and I had been considering a dark beauty theme this week, but the real world has, as it so often does, presented me with another source of inspiration for this week. It is no less frightful, though, let me tell you.
Here in California, where I spend about half my time, we have found ourselves in a very scary house. No, really … it’s quite unsettling here. It’s not haunted exactly, although the frightening presence within the walls, unseen for years but slowly taking over, is pretty spooky stuff. Its was revealed when this strange spongy whiteness came creeping out into a closet, taking over a stack of my dear man’s t-shirt collection and his shoe rack. An inspector came out, looking very much like a guy from Ghostbusters with his large beeping machines and funny probes, and after running them back and forth across the suspect wall, determined that, yes, the house was possessed … by a myriad number of mold types and other fungus. So, guess what is happening suddenly while I am neck-deep in editing and layout, trying to get the next issue of The Polymer Arts together? We are being run out of our house.
So, I have my mind on mold. Which brought Jasmyne Graybill to mind. She had the honor of being the very first artist featured on this blog back in 2012. Because she creates these polymer clay textures in a context in which we see it as an unwanted growth, it appears rather disgusting to us. But look closely at this plate. If you recreated that texture on a bracelet or as a constrained band around a vase, we’d think it were quite lovely. So, it’s not the texture that is inherently repulsive, it’s just our knowledge of what it represents. Beautiful textures can be found in even the creepiest of natures organisms.
I am presently trying to see the beauty in the natural organisms that are invading the house, but I have to say, even though I do find beauty in all forms of decay, I have now come to terms with the fact that I do still prefer it stay outside and away from our apparel, at the very least.
That is my spooky-themed story right now, and as soon as I finish writing this I must get back to boxing things up so I can move operations back to Colorado tomorrow. So I’ll be on the road tomorrow and Wednesday, but by then we should be ready to reveal the Winter issue’s cover. It’s quite dramatic if we do say so ourselves. Stay tuned for that not-so-spooky installment of “The Polymer Zone”. And if you find yourself attracted by the beautiful fungal texture here, take a look at Jasmyne’s collection on her website.
___________________________________________
Like this blog? Lend your support with a purchase of The Polymer Arts magazine and visit our partners:
___________________________________________
Read MoreIn the northern hemisphere we are in the midst of summer, but Mother Nature is showing her many sides from hot and still to muggy and stormy, from tornadoes to floods to hurricanes. Down in the southern hemisphere, summer days are a distant memory, but nonetheless, summery colors are making a surge on the pages I’ve been visiting.
Lillian de Vries created this pendant with its interesting visual and tactile texture as inspiration for a summer challenge on Craftliners.com, a blog for the European wholesale company Craftlines, for which Lillian is a designer. The colors are mostly warm but delicate with a scattering of dark speckles falling out of a cooling ceiling of blue. It strikes me as a visual interpretation of a summer memory with its up and down days scattered through the memories of hot afternoons and those thankfully cool mornings.
Lillian plays with all kinds of texture, both visual and tactile, as well as stopping to create miniature and faux foods here and there. If you’re have a gratefully cool morning hiding from the heat, or are down under dreaming of warmer days, make a temperature appropriate beverage and escape into the creative wanderings on her blog and Craftliner’s pages.
We’ve looked at a few rather free-form versions of rippling, but ripples can also be well controlled and stylized while maintaining that similarly energized feel of movement.
The pins that emerged in The Broken Internet Project had a lot of controlled, but high-energy lines in the designs, most likely due to their inspiration being a pin by the meticulous Dan Cormier, a pin that had a zigzag line (a cousin to the ripple, you could say) through the center of it. I loved Cornelia Brockstedt’s interpretation with both a controlled rippling Skinner blend and a silhouette of a ripple inserted next to it. Calm, but energized. It’s almost the definition of that.
If you never had the chance to see the whole Broken Internet Project results, be sure to jump over to The Cutting Edge’s Facebook page to see them all together. And, for more by the fabulous Cornelia Brockstedt, take a look at her website or her Flickr pages for her latest pieces.
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 MoreSo after a week of extruder contemplation, have you gone into the studio to try out some new ideas yourself? Well, if not, but you’re anxious to try something out, here are a few ideas for you.
A shaped cane with no background fill? Is that possible? According to Lilu of Russia, you can do this with an extruder. How is that possible? Even our brave artist here can’t say how this works, but can show us successful results. The caveat is that you lose about half your clay to scraps as the ends come out mangled. But, with so many scrap cane techniques to put those towards, that might not be the worse thing to happen.
For those of you who want something more straightforward and less experimental, try these extruded snake surface designs with graduated colors created by Lucy Struncova. No real mysteries here … just extrude small snakes in graduated colors (if you’ve not done that before, go here for the classic tutorial on creating rainbow snakes with an extruder), lay them side by side, use the edge of a credit card, or long thin needle tool to impress the lines perpendicular to the snakes and cut out shapes as desired. A quick easy way to get a surface design with a range of colors and complex looking texture.
Or, you can do both! Roll your scrap ends from the background-less extruded cane through the pasta machine, punch a stack of discs to put back into the extruder, extrude snakes to your heart’s content and make Lucy’s snake and line textured sheets. Then accent them with cane slices. Don’t you love how versatile polymer can be? Even using the same stack of clay through several techniques.
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
I have to bring up Christine Damm this week since the first time I ever mentioned naming on this blog was in reference to her shop name–“Stories They Tell”. It’s simple, but really effective, and she also names all her pieces to reflect her thoughts on the work. This one is a happy piece called All That Jazz. The name definitely pushes you towards considering the more musical parallels the colors, shapes and lines convey.
So what does your art, your shop, and (if different) your business names tell others? What do other artist’s shop and business names say to you? These are great questions to ask yourself if you are looking to start something new or change things up in where and how you sell your work.
Find out more about Christine’s work as well as checking out more unusual and story conveying names 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.
Read MoreStacking layers of polymer clay can be a new way of looking at this material sculpturally as well as way to combine and reveal color. Spain’s Natalia García de Leániz (known as Tatana on Flickr) makes these chunky polymer beads by stacking the sliced clay and making bold bracelets with these large design elements.
As Nataila says, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” She works with her husband, Daniel Torres, in an “artnership” where they share ideas and yet they work in different, complementary or even opposite styles. Natalia makes all of her work in polymer clay, frequently working with textures and paint effects on clay. There are some tutorials on her website (and of CraftArtEdu) as well as a lot of additional photographs of her work. They plan to be at EuroSynergy in Malta this year, and if you want an excuse to travel to Madrid, Spain, the couple holds workshops in their studio and throughout Europe!
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