A Big, Bold Challenge
April 14, 2019 Inspirational Art
Have you considered challenging yourself creatively with something you’ve never done before, or at least not for a long time? I have a lot of creative friends who are doing just that right now and, as I work towards having free time again after an exceedingly busy couple of years, I am too considering what to start in on. My mind, probably like yours, never stops churning up ideas so the designs in my head and in my sketchbook have progressed into a variety of new possibilities. The question is, what do I challenge myself with first when I can get back to creating my own artwork on a regular basis?
Whether or not you are at a similar crossroads or want to change up what you’ve been creating, I encourage you to consider the question of how you could challenge yourself as we go through some work that is very much unlike what I have done in the past. I am hoping that, going through some of my own possibilities, this might start those wheels turning for you. What, if any, pieces here feel like they are in the same vein as your present work and which of these approaches have you’ve never imagined yourself doing but might consider?
Not Sage
I, like the vast majority of polymer artists, work primarily from organic inspiration. (See my post from last month about man-made inspiration for contrast.) A lot of my work is also rooted in story, particularly speculative stories dealing with the human struggle in both usual and unusual circumstances. It’s emotional, and personal and not at all neat and tidy. So, this means that certain styles of work almost never cross my mind as options. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try it.
Highly graphic work is one of the things that I’ve never done. I have no aversion to it and, in fact, really enjoy beautifully crafted and highly graphic artwork. I have even drawn particular elements as inspiration for aspects of my work, both in polymer and in graphic design, from the likes of Mondrian, Mucha, and even graphic novels. But I have never designed any highly graphic art work.
If I did aim for a more graphical approach, it might be something like Jana Lehmann’s colorful and fun pieces, with clean lines but still plenty of blended color and subtle color variation to make the colors glow and give it the calm energy I gravitate towards. I could see trying to create cleaner lines and using purer color and standard shapes although I think the organic would find its way in at some point.
Aren’t those flowerpot pins just adorable? That brings up another thing I don’t do much of. I don’t do cute. Which is strange because I love cute! Although I am kind of picky and maybe a bit odd about the cute that I enjoy. So, if I were to try to create something cute, it would probably be cute with a dark edge to it. Maybe something like these Bitty Bitey Ones by Darcy of North Carolina. Just look at these faces! The big black bead eyes help but it takes some serious sculptural instincts to get such great expressions. The cuteness factor is through the roof! Could I work on my skills long enough to create something even half as cute? Would I want to? Won’t know unless I try, right?
There is one thing though – I just couldn’t create such pieces in pink. Now, I have made some pink polymer jewelry in years past, mostly because of requests, and it did sell well but it didn’t do anything for me. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. But the important thing was that I tried and found out I just didn’t want to. That period did get me a touch more comfortable with the color so when it turns up incidentally in a blend or interference powder, I don’t just set it aside. The thing is, it’s not just pink that I steer away from. I don’t, in general, work in bright colors. But I’ve really been thinking that more saturated colors are something I should push myself into trying out.
Maybe I could do something like Jana’s super saturated color schemes above or, go completely over the rails and aim to mix-and-match a little bit of everything in one piece like Susan Dyer so expertly does. Talk about graphic! Her use of solid colors and highly contrasting patterns could be sniped from Bauhaus prints. Her compositions often teeter on the edge of chaos but the confining silver bezels and the consistency of her unmuddled approach to color and pattern creates cohesiveness.
One of the reasons Susan’s work appeals to me is because it’s not actually that big – the pendant above is all of 1.75” by 1.5”. I also tend to design jewelry that works as an accent or embellishment for the wearer rather than it outshining a person. But I know a lot of polymer artists prefer large pieces as one can really show off the surface design and techniques that way. And, honestly, I would love to do some really large jewelry but since I generally wouldn’t wear anything really large, it’s hard for me to envision what a wearer of this kind of work would want, and I think that makes me hesitate to the point that I have not tried.
I have been trying to work up the courage to go big by taking a close look at the work of big and bold artists like Kathleen Nowak Tucci. I love her work because it’s not only unabashedly large but it’s also, in part or almost wholly, created from recycled materials, such as the Saul Bellow award winning piece of hers you see at the opening of this post. And talk about going big … her work has also appeared on several big TV shows including the multiple times her work adorned the immensely talented Lily Tomlin on the show Grace and Frankie. You can see both Kathleen’s Leaf Necklace and Pistil Bracelet on Lily here.
What’s on Your List?
There are a number of other things I could try to push my work outside my comfort zone but these are presently on the top of my list. So, now that you’ve seen the top of my list, what do you think you would you be willing to try out that you would not normally do?
Keep in mind, this self-challenge is not designed to change your style but to just put yourself, and hard, to see what you come up with. There is the potential for as yet unimaginable discoveries about yourself and where you want to take your work. It can be a way to inject some fresh new energy into your studio time and, since there is no end goal such as even showing the work to anyone or selling it, these explorations can give you the freedom to just push yourself in unselfconscious directions.
Are you one of the ones that have been doing this already this year? If so, maybe you’d like to share what you’ve tried to do and how you like the experience. You can insert a comment at the end of the post to let me know. Maybe when things slow down over here in the chaos it is my home at the moment, we can devise a midyear challenge for us all to work on. What do you think?
A Bit of Business … Last Chance to Subscribe and Get Issue #2 Directly from the Printer
If you haven’t subscribed or renewed your subscription to The Polymer Studio, you will want to do so by end of day Monday as we send off the mailing list to the printer to Tuesday morning. Be one of the first to get the new issue in your hot little hands by subscribing or pre-ordering your single issue now.
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Back to the Chaos
Ok, gang, I have to get back to wrapping up the next magazine issue while navigating my discombobulated house. The chaos is in a holding pattern while we wait for the city to get the plans back to us. There is a ton of construction still going on due to the fires in November so things are a tad busy over there. But at least we figured out how to NOT have the refrigerator in the studio although it is just outside my door, just looming over me. So my present challenge is not to open that thing every time I have to squeeze by it!
As for you, my darling readers, I hope you are enjoying your weekend and have a fabulous week to look forward to.
All It’s Cracked Up To Be
March 17, 2019 Inspirational Art
What is it about weathered and worn surfaces that so many people find attractive these days? Mind you, I am very much one of them. I have a whole line of work called “Beautiful Decay” that explores the beauty I find in the deterioration of durable materials. But the one related effect that seems to be everywhere these days is crackling. Who doesn’t love a good crackle! From shabby chic furniture to crazed ceramics to crackle glass decor, the look of a deteriorating surface seems to have wide-ranging appeal.
Knowing that, it’s not really a surprise that crackle is so popular as a polymer technique. A great many of us are already texture fiends and, if you love texture then you are going to try crackle- so there’s one of the reasons for its popularity in polymer. But we also know that there is a market for work with crackled surfaces since it pops up in so many areas related to decoration and adornment, making it a safe bet if you sell your work.
There is no one right or best way to create a crackled surface in polymer. You may not have realized it, but there are literally dozens of ways to create crackle. It can be created with a crackle paint medium, partially cured layers of polymer (like I show you in my Controlled Crackle technique which you can find in your Fall 2011 edition of The Polymer Arts), dried paint (or glaze or gilders’ paste or floor wax) on raw clay, metal leaf on raw clay, leaching, alcohol treatments, or by creating a faux texture with impressed materials. And I know I am still missing a few in that list!
So, let’s enjoy some crackle work today and wrap up with a few tutorials on different crackle techniques that you can try out.
Let’s Get Cracking
One of my personal favorite “cracklers” is Staci Louise Smith. She uses a number of different techniques to achieve a wide range of cracked texture. In the necklace below, her crackle is not subtle. It is not evenly spread across her beads either but rather, it is rough and tumble and scattered in energetic horizontal lines. Her soft coloring calms the chaos of the crackle which is also balanced out by the many other purposeful accents and lines from the wire.
Staci can also do subtle as evidenced by the opening piece, a Balance Bowl from her tutorial in the Polymer Art Projects – Organic book. (You can get the book on our website if you want to make one of these stunning bowls.)
Check out this blog post where she shares how she makes the necklace here along with sketches and her thoughts on the process.
A subtle crackle can often take a bit more patience but what a lovely effect it can have. It may not even be obvious at first that the beads on this necklace below by Ursa Polak have a crackle surface, but the weathered feel comes across immediately. Take a close look to see all the fine-lined cracks that add to the depth and variation of the surface.
Kroma Crackle is a lovely gel medium that itself dries and cracks without having to stretch the clay and yet remains flexible so that you can manipulate the clay without the cracked material popping off. Once you worked with it for a bit you can control the size of the crackle pretty well. You can add small amounts of acrylic paint or mica powders to give yourself a wide variety of color options. You can also apply paints, inks, dyes and other colorants on it after its dry.
These earrings are by Els van Haasen uses Kroma Crackle on polymer. You can see how regular a crackle you can get with this medium. But it can definitely be quite varied once you come to understand how to use it.
You almost forget that the technique that was most commonly used by the highly esteemed Elise Winters, who we lost just this year, was also a crackle technique. Her work was very controlled, as was crackle but that was probably the most recognizable part about her signature style. I can only imagine the work she put into gaining such control over her crackle, but it just shows what can be done when we invest a bit of patience into our work. (I erroneously put in that this was metal leaf when I first posted but, no, it’s paint, which also takes such skilled control, having to ensure that the paint is evenly applied to get such fine crackle.)
This is actually a piece of mine from some years back. It includes alcohol treated raw clay, controlled cracking of partially cured clay, and metal leaf colored with alcohol ink. The alcohol treatment is a way of drying out the surface of raw clay to get a very fine crazing. It’s a bit of a tricky technique but it sure worked here. That helped create the uneven surface of the partially cured polymer under the metal leaf, giving it a burning ember look.
Let’s Crack You Up
Ready to try some various cracking techniques? Here are a few freebies to get you going:
If you want to try the straightforward Paint Crackle Techniques:
- Grab a craft acrylic (the cheap acrylics work better than artist tube acrylics which tend to stretch rather than crack) or tempera paint and a well-conditioned sheet of polymer rolled on the thickest setting of your pasta machine.
- Brush a moderate (not heavy) layer of the paint onto the polymer. Wait for it to completely dry.
- Then roll it through the pasta machine set at two settings down from the thickness you created the sheet on. You can stop here or, for wider, more varied crackle, turn the sheet 90°, adjust the pasta machine down another one or two settings and run it through again.
- You should have a nice crackle now but if your paint is stretching rather than cracking, rolling another sheet of polymer and lay the crackle sheet on top and then start rolling it through the pasta machine again. Eventually, the paint will crack but sometimes you need a really thick layer of polymer to start in order to stretch it far enough. Tempera paint won’t stretch and cracks very nicely if you have that on hand or fancy a run to your local craft store. You could also get some crackle medium while you’re out and follow the instructions to crackle paint directly on your raw polymer clay.
You can find some examples of the use of different paints on this post by Jan Geisen.
For more tutorials online:
- One of the things I didn’t show you in the samples above was how to use impression material to create a faux crackle effect. I use crumpled aluminum foil for this and then use the antiquing approach of rubbing acrylic paint into the cracks after its cured and wiping it off. But Katie Oskin has an interesting material to share in this online tutorial, as well as showing the effect of painting it before she impresses it.
- In this video tutorial, Sandy Huntress shows you how to crackle very thin sheets of partially cured polymer clay.
- Crackling can be done on round surfaces too! Here’s an online tutorial using metal leaf on bicone beads to create crackle. Keep in mind you could do the same thing by painting the beads and then rolling them around to get it crack.
Do you know of other great crackle tutorials or want to point out another crackling technique I didn’t mention? Drop a comment below (if you’re on this post’s page online) or click on the title of this post to go to the post’s page and share the info with us all. It would be much appreciated!
Bits of News
- The IPCA announced the winners of the IPCA awards on Wednesday. Here is a video presentation of it. Or you can find the list here.
- Registration is now open for Dan Cormier and Tracy Holmes new online course, Matrix Canes.
- What are you doing with your tax refund this year? How about getting that NeverKnead machine you’ve been wanting for forever? Get 10% off your new machine now on the website. Use promo code 10PERCENT.
Okay… Off with me. Working on the next issue of The Polymer Studio. Get your subscription or catch up if you didn’t get the first issue by just jumping over to the website now.
Know that your purchases and subscriptions help me pay the bills so I can justify the time I put into sharing all the good stuff on this blog. Help me help you as we collectively feed our addiction to polymer!
Have a wonderful and creative week! –Sage
Some of the most fun I’ve been having on Instagram is how easy it is to find other great art outside of polymer. I love my Pinterest but my pages are stuffed with polymer art, which is wonderful, of course, but there is so much to be seen and inspired by outside of our community and Instagram is delivering a wonderful variety of it.
One of my favorite collector type accounts so far is “The Eclectic Artisans“, a curated showcase of all kinds of art jewelry. That is where I found this stunning piece by Poland’s Jolanta Bromke. Can you tell what the material is that makes up the green portions of the butterfly and leaves? Would you have thought it was embroidery at first glance? How clever and how beautifully done.
The idea of flight and delicacy is so nicely done in the way the components are attached at only one point, as if they will all get up and flutter off at any moment. And the variety of bright greens in the subtle texture of the embroidered threads contrasted by the smooth surfaces of the stones creates a fine balance of texture in a nearly monochrome piece.
The Eclectic Artisans is not only a curator of fantastic contemporary and innovative jewelry, but it’s also a store. And what a store! The Australian-based company showcases, at this time, Australian-based artists, with primarily clean, contemporary designs at exceptionally reasonable prices. You can peruse their shop online here and for more of Jolanta’s work, go to her Facebook page where you can also find amazing leather work that looks like porcelain in other inspiring designs.
Hopefully, I’ll be seeing quite a few of you now on Instagram (find us under “thepolymerarts” if you haven’t already, and I’ll follow you back) but in the meantime, let me wish you a happy holiday as we go into the Christmas weekend. Be safe if you are traveling and I’ll catch up with you all next week after Christmas day.
Read MoreThe art jewelry at these events is also a big draw. There is nothing quite like seeing masterful polymer work in person.
Here is a gorgeous piece by Bonnie Bishoff. She wore it to the final gala event and I just could not stop looking at the delicate forms and sunset-like colors. The picture (and the poor lighting in these places) doesn’t quite do it justice.
Another bonus to coming to these events is the local color. In this case, Sherman Oberson, a board member of the IPCA and a local Pennsylvania resident, treated a small handful of us to a tour of his insanely packed and ever-entertaining collection of flea market and thrift store finds. We did this, in part, to honor Nan Roche whose birthday it was. A huge collector of the curious and visually enticing herself, it was a perfect birthday outing for her and an immensely entertaining evening for those of us who got to tag along.
Poke around on Instagram and Facebook for more on Sherman’s place and other Synergy events.
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Read MoreI have had this in my collection to share for a few weeks, but I hadn’t been able to figure out who the artist was until today. The image came from a Facebook post … that’s all I knew. Now, I am excited to introduce a new artist! Well, an artist that is new to me, I suppose. I haven’t learned a whole lot about her or her artistic story and history just yet.
I was intrigued by the mix of surface textures and the energy of the various lines used. The surface is both impressed with a controlled and deliberate pattern, probably hand tooled, then a central bit of random cracking, then a predictable pattern of swirling copper. They are all highly energetic lines, each doing their own thing independent of the others but nested the way they are and all in a muted orange of some sort, they work together.
The use of line and its energy as well as warm muted colors are even carried into the stringing and connectors of this piece. It makes for a lot of interest and movement but with a very cohesive feel.
After searching and searching, using Google image searches and looking through Facebook for artists with the initials MB, I finally got a hit and the mystery was solved. This necklace was created by Martina Burianova. You can find her on Facebook or check out her work on her website.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Create a surface texture with at least three different types of lines in it. Create cohesiveness by choosing another element or two (color, material, texture, etc) they all have in common. You can make three separate elements, each with different line qualities, then work on arranging them so they have a visual relationship that creates a balanced design, or just dive in working on one surface with line qualities intermixed.
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Read MoreI don’t know what happens online but there have been long spells lately where nothing really jumps out at me as I wander through Pinterest, Flicker, Etsy, Google images, and the many blogs and art sites I keep bookmarked to look for amazing and inspiring work. Maybe it’s just me, but then, all of sudden, pieces are jumping out of the screen to charm me into digging further. This week, I want to share a few that have done that recently but for which I haven’t devised any themes to work them into and I’m just a bit too excited to wait to share them.
These pendants made me stop, not just because they are beautifully designed, but I thought certainly that these were one of the many pieces found on Pinterest that had been mistakenly marked as polymer. Looking into the artist further, I found that Katya Bo does, in fact, make these out of polymer. Only the findings they hang from and the stones embedded in them are not. I’ve done my share of raised thin lines in polymer and they are not at all easy to keep neat and even. It takes a lot of patience and a steady hand. Katya must have those in spades because, according to process photos I found, these are not stamped or cast as they might first appear to be.
Her art deco look sometimes crosses into renaissance and other times takes a whiplash swing into space age styles, but there is always that delicate design reminiscent of enamel using faux granite clay for the base. Her pieces are gorgeously conceived, beautifully detailed, and quietly balanced in design; a combination that seems fairly rare in art jewelry these days.
I spent way more time flipping through her Flickr pages than I had when I first saw her work, then I dug deeper and found her LiveMaster shop as well as her VK.com ‘workroom’ which has the process photos that reveal that, no, those lines are not wires or formed through a more precision method, but are all formed polymer. What a lovely surprise.
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Read MoreI thought this week, we’d just look at color. Because who here doesn’t like that? For most of us it’s such a primary part of working with polymer. How can we resist with all those gorgeous colorful blocks enticing us to create something that honors our fascination with them?
And then we condition and roll, cut and punch, form and wrestle, combine and rearrange and eventually we have this finished piece that, somehow, doesn’t quite reflect what we were after. When it comes to color, even for those of us who can often combine them intuitively, study and practice is what will bring about success in taking the designs from inside our head onto our studio tables.
There are a number of ways to study color and that, I promise, are not at all dull times. What you learn can be immediately turned into beautiful creations. These pendants by Austria’s Carina are studies in complementary and tertiary colors. Now, tell me you would have not enjoyed creating something like these?
Your own personal exploration and study of color can begin (or continue) through a number of options we have available. For polymer specific color studies, there is nothing that comes close to the depth of Lindly Huanani and Maggie Maggio’s book Polymer Clay Color Inspirations. Honestly, if there was one book I’d expect to see on every serious polymer artist’s shelf, it’s this book. It doesn’t matter where you are in your journey as a polymer artist, you will learn something new and maybe even game changing for you.
If you want a quick brush up on terms and why these concepts are important (since we’ll be talking about them all week, it might be good to refamiliarize yourself with them) you can do so on websites like this one: http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-design/basic-color-theory
I’ll also share one of my favorite color pages on all the web … this is a kind of shortcut to figuring out color combinations and it’s also a little addictive. You click on a color on the color wheel and then you can run through a range of possible color combination types. I get lost in the possibilities: http://colorschemedesigner.com/
So go play with color today, online at least if not in the studio. Getting lost in color sounds like a great way to start a week.
Read MoreIn a recent conversation with a couple rather big names in our community, I was asked why the community’s major blogs don’t feature the masters very often. It gave me pause. The thing is, I think we do … but part of it may be that there can be a difference in opinion as to what constitutes a master. But really what it comes down to is why we do these blogs. I know my reason is to bring inspiring ideas to you, things that will get you running into the studio or thinking about how to challenge yourself or tips that might help resolve a design issue. This requires a lot of new work and new ideas. The people we might call masters have perfected a set of techniques and/or approaches to design that most of us have become familiar with, so there is a question as to whether a reader will be very enthused by a post on something they’ve seen before. But what this question did make me consider is what we can get out of revisiting the masters.
We can become so familiar with some things that we just can’t see what there is to learn from it any more. The first time I saw Jeffrey Lloyd Dever’s work was years ago in Art Jewelry magazine. I was floored by his technique and finish (still am actually!) and tried out the tutorial in those pages. I wasn’t very successful but I did learn quite a few things along the way about back-filling and finishing. The thing is, if I worked through that same tutorial now, I would learn something different. What I was able to glean from my exploration of his work then, is not what I would glean from it now. Jeff was at Synergy and had a gallery table of his work so I was able to see his pieces close up. This time it was the color choices that I pondered. That didn’t even cross my mind years ago when I was so focused on technique.
You can see by the detail of his Racine Art Museum installation why his colors might be just a tad intriguing. But is that what intrigues you? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on where you are in your art and even where your thoughts are on this day.
The point is, we should keep revisiting the masters, even the same pieces. The best work does not have just one thing to teach us or for us to take away. Really wonderful art will have many facets that will hit us differently at various points in our lives. So, I’ve been thinking … I should make a point here and there of revisiting even the most familiar work on this blog, give us a chance to get reacquainted with it and find what is new and exciting for us because of where we are as a community today. I’d love to hear that many of you are or will do the same. If you have any great discoveries in doing this, do let me know. We can share it here.
By the way, I pulled this image of Jeff’s work from the Polymer Art Archive which is also a treasure of a source for work from our past as well as our present. It is well worth reading and visiting on a regular basis.
Read MoreI thought a few of you would be interested in this grant. With so much talent out there, polymer clay could certainly bring in some serious competition. Here are the guidelines:
http://www.artjewelryforum.org/emerging-artist-guidelines
There is a definite lean towards non-traditional materials or non-traditional applications of common materials such as this mix of felt, plastic and enamel by the 2006 recipeint Natalya Pinchuk.
The grant applications need to be in by September 30th!
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