Small Circles of Joy
August 29, 2018
Inspirational Art
Something else that really speaks to me is an expression of simple joy. Think about some of the favorite moments in your life. They aren’t always—maybe are not even usually—the big elaborate parties or exotic trips. They tend to be little things like that morning your granddaughter snuck out of her bed to come curl up next to you because she was so excited that you were visiting. It’s the time you and your sister laughed so hard at something the dog did that you literally fell out of your chair. It’s the wonder you feel that day in spring when the first flowers show themselves. Simple little joys are such disproportionately delightful and treasured things.
I can’t say for sure that the emotion of simple joy is what Denada Palla intended when she created these sweet little earrings but I can’t imagine, if it’s not, that it’s not something related. The stems the flowers stand on are not straight but wiggle just a little bit like they are starting to dance. The red poppies float to the top of their little canvas like they’re ready to fly off. The movement created by the imperfection of the lines and the proximity of the edge contributes greatly to that sense of joyfulness, as does the not-quite-alike pair. The uncomplicated design keeps that joy front and center.
Denada hails from Greece where she creates simple, floral-inspired jewelry which she sells on Etsy. Her sense of fun and, that which I interpret as joy, comes across on her Facebook page as well.
Can’t Miss Ron
February 9, 2018
Inspirational Art
No technique, no cane, no scrap is safe from the creative machinations of Ron Lehocky. And apparently neither is the admiration of so many, many people inside and outside the polymer community. Ron may have a big focus on hearts and creates them in just a few shapes but he never stops exploring what he can do on his little canvases. Dropping in to see what he has created recently is always a treat and an inspiring reminder of how many little things can make a huge difference in so many people’s lives.
If for some reason you are not familiar with Ron’s crusade to help ailing children, he raises funds through the sale of his hearts for a center that aids in the ongoing education of these children’s caregivers and physicians. Here is a video where he explains how this came about as well as how to make these beautiful hearts.
Ron uses canes and mokume blocks kindly donated from artists from all over to quickly create these little masterpieces, occasionally creating his own surface treatments. In the image here, starting with the iris hearts and going clockwise, he used canes from Jayne Dwyer, Jon Stuart Anderson, and Ivy Niles. The last set shows his own surface designs using metallic powders.
If you have some special people you want gifts for this Valentine’s day, Ron’s hearts are ideal. He doesn’t create special orders as much of his work depends on what he’s been sent but any one of them would be lovely to give or own. You can find a list of the places they are sold as well as how to order them by email by going to this link.
If you want to admire his many pieces, the best places to go are his Instagram or Facebook accounts.
Variation on Time
December 1, 2017
Inspirational Art
I spent a lot of time looking for differently constructed clocks in polymer and couldn’t find much that really illustrated the point I was hoping to make. What I wanted was to show that a clock does not have to be on a flat surface. It can be made of many parts, attached or not, and fully dimensional. As long as you have something that can house or hide the clock mechanism while holding out the hands, the rest is wide open. You can have the hour markers designated by any form and attach them with sticks or wire or be free floating–whatever suits the piece and your inclination.
These two examples are commercial designs rather than polymer art but I think they give you the basics of this idea of moving beyond the flat clock face. Not only do these kinds of clocks make for really interesting wall pieces, they give you the freedom to use pieces you may already have such as large hollow beads, faux stones, unhung pendants, small figurines, flowers, etc.
As a gift, giving a clock that has separate pieces might be best attached to something that can be hung as one piece, like a backing of Plexiglas or painted plywood. Or include instructions for a template to mark on the wall where each piece goes. There is little to no construction to deal with but you will have to make concessions in the design for how the individual pieces will be hung. Alternately, go for a design where the elements are attached like the flowers you see here.
The sky is the limit with these kinds of designs. For more ideas, try searching “DIY clocks,” which was the keyword set that brought me to these two pieces. I hope these sparks some ideas and I look forward to seeing inventive clock designs this month!
Large Expression
April 25, 2016
Inspirational Art
We are going to spend this week on a few more of the artists who made it to the most notable position in the new Polymer Journeys book. Mind you, there is a lot of very, very notable art in the book but these six made a showing that really impresses people. Heather Campbell‘s work is notable for the way she makes a personal connection with the viewer, creating imagery that speak to ubiquitous experiences that, nonetheless, quite often feel very personal and unique. Her large wall pieces emerge from her experiences and dreams with the many details reflecting the complexity of life and emotion, something I think we can all relate to.
As she writes on her blog, “I consider my work an extension of life experience, designed with complexity while remaining beautifully simple …While creating myself or teaching others I emphasize imagination and self-expression.”
The piece here, a huge wall hanging at 36″x54″, is titled Off The Deep End. It speaks to a very essential question that many of us have struggled with. In reference to this piece, Heather says, “Being true to oneself is one of life’s greatest accomplishments, with rewards that parallel the most beautiful colors, the greatest adventures and the deepest questions. That world awaits us, with its danger, its uncertainty, its beauty and endless opportunity. The query is, do we take the leap, do we step into the unknown, do we trust ourselves?”
You really need to go to Heather’s website to see the wide variety in her work as well as read her thoughts about each. She certainly has something to say.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Let’s have a day of pure expression. Choose a small number of colors that “feel” how you feel today. Keep your favorite hand tools nearby, roll out your clay on a mid-range thickness or condition as you normally would to start a project and then just play. Don’t think about it and don’t worry about whether anyone else will see it. Just let you imagination go and create whatever the clay leads you to create.
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Repeating Yourself
January 29, 2016
Inspirational Art
It’s been a week of seeing something new in something you already have in front of you, and I have been having a lot of fun with the ideas while readers have been getting quite a kick out of what we’ve been sharing. So, let’s do this one more time, but with a twist. Let’s try out repetition and pattern.
Nature is full of repeated elements all brought together to create beautiful and perfectly formed patterns. If you follow nature’s guidelines, you can take any form or element and make it in the same or graduating sizes and repeat them side-by-side, over-lapping, sitting on top of one another, or all in a row. The formation is not as important to these beautiful patterns as the precision and consistency of form and placement. Apparently, an artichoke suggested the placement of the beautiful pieces that make up this necklace by Eva Ehmeier. Or maybe she created them and it made her think of artichokes. But the natural repetitive element is there, echoing that recognizable natural beauty.
This technique of layered, folded, and repeated elements has been a common approach of Eva’s in years past and she has plenty of examples of it on her Flickr photostream and her website.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Find a natural repeated pattern that intrigues you and try recreating the pattern using a favorite element. Nature has patterns everywhere. You might find yours in your fridge, a garden, on a hiking path, or something you see at the zoo. Recreate the pattern, not what you were inspired by. You don’t need an element that will recreate the look of that turtle shell, just something that can be fitted together in a regular pattern, like the hexagonal sections of the shell do. Or layer your favorite bright blue and purple canes slices in that similar overlay pattern you found in a pine cone you picked up. Try to see only the pattern and bring that into the studio or your sketchbook.
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Floral Lines
April 2, 2015
Inspirational Art
Today, I thought we’d just admire the easy way that flowers can be used, like any singular element, as a way to create lines. Lines define and give direction, as well as creating energy by creating visual movement. An arrangement of many small flowers will create those lines just as would a series of beads, crystals, hand tool marks, etc. So instead of bunching flower motifs into, well, a bunch, consider how you can create lines with them to convey the kind of calm or energy you are after in the piece you are making.
Here is a beautiful set of champagne bottles created by Anastaisa of Art-Kisto4ka on Livemaster.ru. I love the way the line of flowers twist back and forth on the first two bottles giving the compositions a flowing energy, which is further picked up and added to by the lines of pearly dots shooting off in little swirls. I included one that outlined a heart as well simply to show how the flowers can create a grounded line that easily defines a shape.
Anastasia makes the most realistic looking flowers. I have to look around to ensure they weren’t real and preserved flowers. The ones on the bottles are excellent, but it’s her larger flowers that will really blow you away. You can see more of her finished work in her shop and on her blog. She also sells her flowers as components in her supply shop on LiveMaster.
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Masses of Flowers
August 12, 2014
Inspirational Art
In all of the comments and emails that I received regarding yesterday’s post, it seems as if we find nature’s masses of similar items most alluring.
Flowers are, of course, an obvious example. Nature packs them in bunches on bushes, in small explosions of colors in meadows and amassed across the canopy of trees in the spring.
So, I went looking for a polymer example, and there are plenty of them, but I particularly like this bracelet due to the likeness of the flowers in shape and size, with just a little change in color. I think this is more nature’s type of design versus the lovely, but very varied designs of the more ornate floral pieces we have seen so much of the last few years.
This was created by a Russian artist who lists her name as Valeria-Maslova in her Livemaster shop. She has a lot of lovely items in her shop, which include more masses of flowers, circles and colonies of shapes that will intrigue you. I am off to keep working on polishing up the next issue, and as you all suggest, I will head off in search of more of these designs to share with you.
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.
Snip, Snip
November 28, 2013
Inspirational Art
There is more than one way to cut into polymer! Yesterday we looked at cutting in to reveal many layers in extruded beads, but here we have a simple yet brilliant technique that requires cutting in with scissors, but not actually cutting away and removing clay as the other examples this week have shown. Here is the snipping portion of this technique by Kazakhstan’s Budanceva Marina (also known as Aquamalinka).
And here is an example of one of her finished pieces using the elements it creates. Wonderfully realistic clover flowers, aren’t they?
Although this technique is specific to creating these flowers, there is no reason why taking scissors to polymer in this manner must stop here. It’s a great texture that can be added as half dome accents, and if you snipped a little longer across the surface you could have small lengths of clay curling back on itself. I wish I had time to do some exploration and show you some possible ideas, but this week, I leave that to those of you who are inspired by this idea.
Go explore more of Budanceva’s predominantly floral work on her Livemaster shop page.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my US readers. I personally am very thankful for having such kind and enthusiastic readers who have allowed me to make publishing and polymer a focus in my life. Now, off to enjoy family while trying not to do myself in with too much turkey and pie.
Building out the Box
October 26, 2013
Inspirational Art
With my connection (and faith) in the internet restored, we will resume chatting about boxes and ways to expand on the popular form.
For our weekend peek at lidded containers, I saved a piece by Kim Detmers. The concept here simply stretches the way that you can use your ‘canvas’. Even though a canvas is a flat space to begin with, that doesn’t mean you need to create your work based on that kind of two-dimensional space. Consider possible ways to build up, build out, and work into the space around the vessel, not just the ‘real estate’ that is the surface of the vessel. Kim builds up on the lid, and out into the space above the container. She has also made the lid the unmistakable focal point, which is a bit unusual since it would seem that the tendency is to make the lid an accent or compliment to the body of the box. In fact, with the lid on, it may not look like a container at first, but rather more of a sculpture. And in essence, what should an artistically formed box meant for a bit more than function be but a sculpture?
I know the concept of building into space, considering design and composition in terms of the form, and then using the space around it can sometimes be daunting to ponder. But it is great fun and quite visually impressive when something as simple as a box has been grown into a sculpture that lives in the space around the container, not just on its surface.
If you want a little more information on how to use the space surrounding your pieces, check out the article “Create With Space” in the very popular Spring 2012 issue of The Polymer Arts about this very subject. (Said issue which is just about sold out in the print format, so if you want this or the Summer 2012 issue, you might want to order them soon before we run out.)
And if you like Kim’s work, take a look at her engaging blog and her Etsy shop.
Working in floral is a license to go all out with color. Springtime flowers are bright, vivid things, competing against all the other bright and vivid colors of the season. You can take a lesson from their boldness: if you are going to get colorful, don’t hold back on just how bold or striking your color combinations are.
This necklace from 2 Good Claymates (Carolyn and Dave Good) has an fairly limited palette, but the saturation and contrast of the color are quite striking, don’t you think?
This is just one example of being bold without having to overdose the viewer with color. Being bright and bold is not about how many colors you use, but how they work together. Think contrast when you are after brilliant color–the darker blue against the bright of the turquoise and the lighter yellow is where this color combination in this piece gets its punch. If you have accents or backgrounds to go along with your bold components, consider toning down those colors so they don’t compete too much. You can see how that works in this necklace, with the leaves here created in more muted greens. They allow the bright flowers to really pop.
I can’t imagine a piece like this not grabbing some serious attention at the next garden party, even amidst nature’s own work!
Read MoreI know its technically been Spring for a couple months in the northern hemisphere, but its really just now that the blooms are showing and the lushness of Spring is making its appearance, at least outside my door. Between all the beauty outside and working on the next issue of The Polymer Arts — which is being created under the theme “Organics” — my mind is focused on the outdoors; so I thought we’d indulge in the beauty of flora.
I wanted to move away a bit from jewelry this week, but if we’re focusing on flowers, that might be a bit difficult since floral adornment is so prevalent and popular. But how about something that’s not quite jewelry, along with great ideas for some possible new products?
The season for weddings is upon us up here, so that’s another reason to think floral; it’s a rare wedding that doesn’t feature a few — or a ton — of flowers. This bouquet with matching wine glass charms is all polymer. The idea of going floral without the fragility of fresh blooms is the subject of an interesting idea blog for weddings I came across. Tatiana Belikov from Lipetsk, Russia is the creator of the realistic looking bouquet and accessories in the post.
There is also mention of making matching hair adornments for the bride (and bridesmaids!,) and accent pieces for candles, napkin rings, etc. Such polymer decorations at a wedding could be an easy sell; they can be gifts for the guests (and those bridesmaids!) that will last so they can be treasured and used again in the same capacity. And just think, with polymer florals … the bride would always have that bouquet, one that can decorate a table or shelf for many, many years, and be another gorgeous memory to keep and remember that special day by. Beautiful idea.
Read MoreThe arrangement of your color schemes can be as important as the color choices themselves. Here is an example of using two kinds of color schemes but arranging them for the most impact.
In this brilliantly colored necklace by Kristie Foss, the color scheme moves from the analogous colors purple and red to complementary colors as the deep red bleeds into its opposing color on the color wheel, a bright green. The contrast is not just in the the choice of base color but the red is also darker and leaning towards purple while the green is lighter and leaning towards purple’s opposite, yellow.
This same dramatic impact can be accomplished even when the complementary colors are not right next to each other in the piece. In this flower brooch of Kristie’s she has purple changing to a dark then light blue and then we’re hit by a contrasting yellow which takes over the center of the flow. With the broadest swathes of pure color being the yellow in the center and the purple covering the edges, the impact from the complementary colors still works and it doesn’t hurt that blue and yellow are tertiary (colors a third of the color wheel away from each other) which adds touch more impact as well.
Krisite really does love her color and creates lovely combinations. You can check out more of her work and yummy colors on her blog here.
Read MoreAs complex as I like to work, I do so enjoy beautiful little things borne of simplicity. Katerina Kubova looks to spend a fair amount of time carefully curling small, bright colorful bits of clay and gathering them into simple but beautiful little bouquets.
Simple designs may seem to make creating a nice piece easier but in fact the simplicity makes getting it done well all the more important. With the complexity and dazzle of a more intricate design or treatment of the clay, the workmanship, color choices, and form will stand out. If you want to work simple, you must do it very, very well. That is why pieces like this work. There is obvious care and consideration and that is what makes them noteworthy.
Read MoreMy mother is a horticulturist so although I have never been heavily drawn to flowery things, I learned through her to fully appreciate the beauty of a well-formed bloom. Polymer artists, as a whole, do like their flowers likely because so many of our ladies are drawn to their inherent beauty, but also because the complexity of a flower can easily be achieved through the repetition of relatively simple petals. But the petals of a real flower are, in reality, quiet complex, each petal with its own curls and waves and way of enfolding the flower’s center. To properly reproduce this complexity, each petal needs to be given a little individuality. That is what I enjoyed so much about finding these little beauties by Taisa Chernyak.
It might take a bit longer to give each petal its own form but don’t you think the individuality of each gives the whole a much more convincing and natural beauty? Take a look at her tutorial on how she produces these life-like blooms.
The idea of each individual providing the character that creates the true beauty in the bigger picture is true on so many levels. Even as individual artists, bringing our own personality and uniqueness to the artwork we produce creates a more splendid picture of polymer art overall. Repeating what has already been done will add very little to the art world, but your own unique art adds much, much more.
Read MoreFloral motifs are so popular in polymer but not quite so much as a realistic sculptural subject. I think that is why this grabbed me.
These flowers are by Catherine Zverzhanskaya of Moscow. They are all polymer delicately formed with great little details. I don’t think these are even her most impressive flowers. She works these into jewelry as well as decor. Take a look at her website. Really incredible variety of flowers, all very realistic. If you want to learn how she does more of this, she has a nice FAQ section as well that covers her use of cold porcelain as well.
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