How To Clay Doodle
January 17, 2015 Inspirational Art
Have you started doodling yet? We talked about doodling as a drawing technique yesterday, but you know what … you can also doodle with clay! The main objective in clay doodling is to create something unplanned, to let your mind and hands work up a design that comes from unconscious ideas and to follow the patterns that emerge with your directionless play. Like drawing doodles, this kind of clay play can relieve stress and help you break though design problems and the creatives blahs.
These cabochon beads are clay doodles by Jael Thorp. See just how beautiful a bit of clay doodling can be? Jael actually does a lot of clay doodling. Even those pieces she doesn’t list as doodles, such as cane-covered ornaments and extrusions decorated hearts, have a definite doodling feel to them. They are great examples of how limitless this doodling with clay idea is. There aren’t any restrictions as to how you doodle with clay. Use extrusions, bits of clay, cane slices, sheets of clay you take hand tools to or embellishments. It’s about letting the mind and hands go and seeing where they take you.
To see more of Jael’s work, visit her Art Fire shop or her Flickr pages. You can read about her process on her award-winning blog site, “Jael’s Art Jewels Blog.”
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Outside Inspiration: The Art of the Doodle
January 16, 2015 Inspirational Art
So yesterday I brought you a wire artist who got into carving rubber stamps. Did the carving idea pique your interest? I think the hardest part of carving a stamp is not going to be the carving itself but deciding on a pattern to carve. How do you come up with stamp design ideas? Well, besides copying someone else’s patterns or designs — which would negate the point of creating your own original stamps — you can find your own personal patterns by doing something you probably did a lot as a kid or as a bored teenager in class. You can doodle.
Doodling is not as pointless and aimless as it might seem. It is really a translation of what is going on in your subconscious or, or it’s an expression of your mind’s reaction to what you see and hear around you. If you are doodling without a preconceived idea of what you are drawing, especially while otherwise occupied (such as being on hold during a phone call or listening to a lecture), the doodling can create a very personal design and set of patterns pulled from subconscious thoughts.
A recent doodling-related development is the Zentangle which uses repeated patterns and lines to lend your doodling direction. The original Zentagle method includes a series of rules, such as drawing only in 3.5 inch squares, only drawing in pen so you can’t erase and only drawing abstract designs. So it’s not quite doodling, but it can result in similarly personal designs. A lot of people have expanded on the Zentangle idea, throwing many rules out the window and developing cool abstract art like the Zentangle doodle you see here, by illustrator Angel Van Dam. Her doodles are a bit more organized and purposeful than your standard notepad doodle but aren’t standard Zentangling either. The thing is, it doesn’t matter how you approach it –doodle loose and randomly, mark off the 3.5 inch square to Zentangle in, or use a contractor to draw concentric circles, as Angel did for this illustration, and fill it in as you like.
And why should you want to doodle? Because it can offer so much for your polymer play! Use doodles or Zentangles to create the patterns for your carved rubber stamps. Doodle with colored pencils, and use it as an image transfer onto clay. Use the patterns, imagery or colors to inspire or directly design a polymer piece from.
Doodling is also thought to help you problem-solve so, if you hit a creative block, stop and listen to some music, a book on tape or podcast, and then just doodle away! The solution to your creative work can then bubble to the surface, or you may find a whole new idea there in front of you. No matter what, it is no waste of time. The other thing about doodling that has been discovered through clinical studies is that it reduces stress and can make you more aware and mindful. So doodle for your well-being as well as for your art!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Innate Creativity
September 6, 2014 Ponderings
Today, I’m going to get a little chatty. And, I hope you’ll have the patience to read this because it has bearing on what you might get out of this blog as well as on the idea of play.
If you read this blog regularly, then you know I will often aim to break down the reasons why a piece works, what I think the artist might have been doing or the intention behind the choices in color, form, line, etc. This kind of analysis intellectualizes or breaks down what is often an innate, instinctual, and/or playful process. Analysis and playing would seem to be on opposite ends of a creative spectrum, but they aren’t. They are actually two aspects of the process that goes into creating successful art.
In art school you have design concepts drilled into you, and you spend what seems like half your time analyzing and critiquing the work of others based largely on these concepts. You are also, however, pushed to play and experiment, to break down boundaries and take chances by putting yourself and your experiences into your work. What I didn’t really realize until years after art school is that I rarely ever thought about the concepts I had learned. I didn’t need to. They were ingrained in me through all the drilling, through the critical discussions and the regular analysis of other work. The insistence to break boundaries and take chances was, on the other hand, something I was quite conscious of. That seemed odd, but it worked. I could push myself to create fairly successfully without really thinking about why I made the choices I made. I just knew.
If you have been working artistically for a while, you have probably experienced at least a bit of this in the skills and techniques you have learned from constant practice; those things you no longer even think about how to do. Maybe its creating Skinner blends or knowing how to neatly reduce a cane. You’ve done it so many times you can do it without thinking, and your mind and fingers are freed up to ponder and create as your inspiration dictates.
This is why I repeat, rehash and reword the concepts of design over and over in these blogs; not because I want to take the fun and mystery out of creating, but because I want you to know it from hearing and seeing it so often that you never have to think about it. I really hope that hearing these ideas until they are ingrained can help you with your design choices, with finding the solutions to unsatisfactory outcomes, and with freeing you up to express yourself in beautiful, well-balanced and very personal ways, all without consciously considering the concepts. My hope is that all this talk of design just lives there in the background as you create, giving your child-side plenty of room to play and be curious.
So this weekend, I leave you with these thoughts and also encourage you to check out one of our communities consummate players, Deb Crothers who has been going nuts lately with these grunge beads of hers. You can see them develop through the photos on her Flickr site. You may also want to read some of her recent blog posts on why she doesn’t sell her work any more and her thoughts on the importance of play, which is where I saw these luscious square beads you see here. I think you will enjoy her sentiments.
Now its time for me to try and get some creative playtime in. I wish you lots of successful playing this weekend!
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.
Have you started doodling yet? We talked about doodling as a drawing technique yesterday, but you know what … you can also doodle with clay! The main objective in clay doodling is to create something unplanned, to let your mind and hands work up a design that comes from unconscious ideas and to follow the patterns that emerge with your directionless play. Like drawing doodles, this kind of clay play can relieve stress and help you break though design problems and the creatives blahs.
These cabochon beads are clay doodles by Jael Thorp. See just how beautiful a bit of clay doodling can be? Jael actually does a lot of clay doodling. Even those pieces she doesn’t list as doodles, such as cane-covered ornaments and extrusions decorated hearts, have a definite doodling feel to them. They are great examples of how limitless this doodling with clay idea is. There aren’t any restrictions as to how you doodle with clay. Use extrusions, bits of clay, cane slices, sheets of clay you take hand tools to or embellishments. It’s about letting the mind and hands go and seeing where they take you.
To see more of Jael’s work, visit her Art Fire shop or her Flickr pages. You can read about her process on her award-winning blog site, “Jael’s Art Jewels Blog.”
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Read MoreSo yesterday I brought you a wire artist who got into carving rubber stamps. Did the carving idea pique your interest? I think the hardest part of carving a stamp is not going to be the carving itself but deciding on a pattern to carve. How do you come up with stamp design ideas? Well, besides copying someone else’s patterns or designs — which would negate the point of creating your own original stamps — you can find your own personal patterns by doing something you probably did a lot as a kid or as a bored teenager in class. You can doodle.
Doodling is not as pointless and aimless as it might seem. It is really a translation of what is going on in your subconscious or, or it’s an expression of your mind’s reaction to what you see and hear around you. If you are doodling without a preconceived idea of what you are drawing, especially while otherwise occupied (such as being on hold during a phone call or listening to a lecture), the doodling can create a very personal design and set of patterns pulled from subconscious thoughts.
A recent doodling-related development is the Zentangle which uses repeated patterns and lines to lend your doodling direction. The original Zentagle method includes a series of rules, such as drawing only in 3.5 inch squares, only drawing in pen so you can’t erase and only drawing abstract designs. So it’s not quite doodling, but it can result in similarly personal designs. A lot of people have expanded on the Zentangle idea, throwing many rules out the window and developing cool abstract art like the Zentangle doodle you see here, by illustrator Angel Van Dam. Her doodles are a bit more organized and purposeful than your standard notepad doodle but aren’t standard Zentangling either. The thing is, it doesn’t matter how you approach it –doodle loose and randomly, mark off the 3.5 inch square to Zentangle in, or use a contractor to draw concentric circles, as Angel did for this illustration, and fill it in as you like.
And why should you want to doodle? Because it can offer so much for your polymer play! Use doodles or Zentangles to create the patterns for your carved rubber stamps. Doodle with colored pencils, and use it as an image transfer onto clay. Use the patterns, imagery or colors to inspire or directly design a polymer piece from.
Doodling is also thought to help you problem-solve so, if you hit a creative block, stop and listen to some music, a book on tape or podcast, and then just doodle away! The solution to your creative work can then bubble to the surface, or you may find a whole new idea there in front of you. No matter what, it is no waste of time. The other thing about doodling that has been discovered through clinical studies is that it reduces stress and can make you more aware and mindful. So doodle for your well-being as well as for your art!
If you like this blog, support The Polymer Arts projects with a subscription or an issue of The Polymer Arts magazine as well as supporting our advertising partners.
Read MoreToday, I’m going to get a little chatty. And, I hope you’ll have the patience to read this because it has bearing on what you might get out of this blog as well as on the idea of play.
If you read this blog regularly, then you know I will often aim to break down the reasons why a piece works, what I think the artist might have been doing or the intention behind the choices in color, form, line, etc. This kind of analysis intellectualizes or breaks down what is often an innate, instinctual, and/or playful process. Analysis and playing would seem to be on opposite ends of a creative spectrum, but they aren’t. They are actually two aspects of the process that goes into creating successful art.
In art school you have design concepts drilled into you, and you spend what seems like half your time analyzing and critiquing the work of others based largely on these concepts. You are also, however, pushed to play and experiment, to break down boundaries and take chances by putting yourself and your experiences into your work. What I didn’t really realize until years after art school is that I rarely ever thought about the concepts I had learned. I didn’t need to. They were ingrained in me through all the drilling, through the critical discussions and the regular analysis of other work. The insistence to break boundaries and take chances was, on the other hand, something I was quite conscious of. That seemed odd, but it worked. I could push myself to create fairly successfully without really thinking about why I made the choices I made. I just knew.
If you have been working artistically for a while, you have probably experienced at least a bit of this in the skills and techniques you have learned from constant practice; those things you no longer even think about how to do. Maybe its creating Skinner blends or knowing how to neatly reduce a cane. You’ve done it so many times you can do it without thinking, and your mind and fingers are freed up to ponder and create as your inspiration dictates.
This is why I repeat, rehash and reword the concepts of design over and over in these blogs; not because I want to take the fun and mystery out of creating, but because I want you to know it from hearing and seeing it so often that you never have to think about it. I really hope that hearing these ideas until they are ingrained can help you with your design choices, with finding the solutions to unsatisfactory outcomes, and with freeing you up to express yourself in beautiful, well-balanced and very personal ways, all without consciously considering the concepts. My hope is that all this talk of design just lives there in the background as you create, giving your child-side plenty of room to play and be curious.
So this weekend, I leave you with these thoughts and also encourage you to check out one of our communities consummate players, Deb Crothers who has been going nuts lately with these grunge beads of hers. You can see them develop through the photos on her Flickr site. You may also want to read some of her recent blog posts on why she doesn’t sell her work any more and her thoughts on the importance of play, which is where I saw these luscious square beads you see here. I think you will enjoy her sentiments.
Now its time for me to try and get some creative playtime in. I wish you lots of successful playing this weekend!
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.
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