Strength in Colors
July 26, 2020
Inspirational Art
Understanding color strength in your materials becomes key to creating even gradations in blends like the one here in a bracelet by Jana Honnerova.
Are any of you having color information withdrawals after nearly 2 weeks since we’ve had the chance to chat about color? I did miss it myself! And I do apologize that I wasn’t able to post anything last week. I had hoped to at least post an explanation for my lack of an article but, unfortunately, it has been a very chaotic time in my family’s world and, honestly, I simply couldn’t focus enough to write. I’ll catch you up on my world at the end of this post for those of you who are interested but let’s talk color a bit first and get back on track.
Math versus Cooking
If you have been reading this blog since early June, you essentially have all the tools to successfully mix colors with control and confidence. At least in an ideal world. What I mean by that ominous statement is that the information you have does provide you with the basis for successful pigment based color mixing but now I am going to challenge you to take ideal information to an erratic and uncertain pigment world.
You see, the information I gave you appears, and in some circumstances is, pretty predictable. It’s practically math since you can, theoretically, determine that if you mix this much of one hue and that much of another hue, add a small portion of white, black, gray, or a complementary color to further tint, shade, or tone it, and you will get a specific predictable color. However, you are working with pigments. That is more like cooking where you work with a generic ingredient list, imprecise measuring tools, and primary components whose flavor and texture are subject to the whims of mother nature.
Our clays, paints, dyes, and inks may not be subject to mother nature but the manufacturing of these artistic ingredients are subject to product changes due to the availability of materials and fluctuations in quality, storage, age, and, of course, brands and lines within those brands. These variations will inevitably affect the characteristics of our color mixing materials.
I could tell you a lot more about the variations in materials and why they affect each other the way they do but I’m not going to do that at this moment. Right now, let’s just experiment with what we’ve learned and with the most dominant issue you run into as a result of these variations – color strength.
Knowing thy Material
One of the most basic things you will need to become familiar with in your materials is that some colors are much stronger than other colors when mixed. What I mean by this is that you can put equal parts of 2 different colors into a mix but when one is stronger than the other, it will dominate the mix and look like you put a lot more of that color in than the other. For instance, in a lot of art materials including polymer clay, darker colors tend to have more pigment and so when mixed with a lighter color, you can readily recognize the darker color but a lighter clay color may have less pigment or a lot of white in it so it gets kind of drowned out. More saturated colors tend to do the same thing, espeically when they are more saturated as well as darker than the other color it is being mixed with.
This is also often true between inexpensive and high-quality brands or lines. The manufactuers of an inexpensive line may use less pigment or poor quality colorants to help keep their costs down so they can offer the materials at a cheaper price. If you mix an inexpensive brand with a high-quality brand, you should not be surprised if you find the high quality one is generally stronger when mixing, espeically in colors of similar color value or saturation.
Getting Your Hands Colorfully Dirty
This week, I’m going to suggest that you try to become familiar with the stronger and weaker colors in your preferred brand and line of materials. This exercise assumes that you’re using opaque material such as clay or paint. The exercises work differently with translucent colors such as dyes and inks, which can get quite complex, so I would suggest you practice with only opaque materials for now. We’ll talk about translucent materials later.
Color Bias Chart
- Start by gathering a selection of colors. You can grab three primaries, three secondaries and black and white, or, if you’re ready for it, gather primary pairs based on the color biases we learned about in the last post. For bias pairs, pull 2 versions each of yellow, cyan, magenta. That means you’ll need a yellow that leans towards green and the other leaning towards orange, a cyan leaning towards blue and the other towards green, and a magenta that is more red while the other is more violet. You’ll want black and white as well.
- Then prepare your materials for mixing. If you’re using polymer clay, sheet each color in your pasta machine on the same thickness and cut with a single size punch cutter so that each “part” is one punch of clay. If you are working with paint, use approximately the same size daubs of paint and use them directly out of the tube or at least don’t dilute them.
- Start with just the black and white. Mix one-part white and one part black together. Mix them completely to get a gray.
Pull out your grayscale or print the one here. (Click on the image to get a large version to print.) Check the resulting gray of your mix against the grayscale here. I’m guessing it’s going to be pretty darn dark instead of a middle gray (5 on my chart). In general, black clay or paint has a ton of pigment which means you probably need a lot of white to make a middle gray.- Try it again but this time use one part black and four parts white. Now, where does that land on the value scale? If it’s still not a middle gray, make another mix, changing the proportions to include more white or more black depending on whether it needs to be lighter or darker to reach a middle gray.
- What was the final proportions to get that middle value? Make note of that. Now you’ll have an idea of how much a bit of black can darken a color or how much white you’re going to need to lighten a color. Yes, it will take practice to get something exactly as you want it but just becoming familiar with the strength of your black versus your white will get you there a lot quicker as you move into tinted and shaded color mixes.
- Now, choose a yellow and your darkest color (that is not black) from the colors you gathered. It’ll probably be the cyan that leans towards violet or a blue. Do the same thing. Start by mixing the exact same amounts and see which color seems to dominate the mix. Chances are, it will be the darker one, although in some lines, there are some pretty strong yellows and some pretty weak blues. What did you come up with? Adjust your proportions and mix them again until you have a sample where neither one seems to dominate. How much of the weaker color did you need to acheive that?
- Finally, mix a set of secondary colors if you gathered primary color biased pairs to work with, or mix tertiary colors if you gathered a set of primary and secondary colors in your materials. (Review this post if needed.) See how much you need of one color versus the other to create a secondary or tertiary color that neither color you mixed with dominates. Make mental or actual notes on which colors dominate a mix.
As you do this, you will begin to become truly familiar with the strength of the colors in your material. This will be absolutely essential when we get down to masterful color mixing. It also will save you a lot of wasted materials, allowing you to mix small amounts that don’t end up being large amounts because you have to keep adding the weaker color to get it where you want. In fact, when you start mixing with unfamiliar colors or a new brand, do this exercise to become quickly familiar with the variations in colors. And if you end up with some really yummy new colors doing these exercises, save the sample and note the proportions so you can mix it for a future project!
Worst Year Ever
2020. Worst … year … ever. I’m just putting that out there. It started with friends getting choked out from the terrible fires in Australia, then there was the pandemic, then the economic fallout, then there were the not new but spotlighted tragedies that led to racial protests and riots, and now, closer to home, my family and I are trying to fathom our own personal tragedy.
Many of you who follow me on Facebook already have heard that we lost an important family member last week–a brother-in-law who my siblings and I grew up with. He was no less than a brother to us and he married the sister I consider my closest confidant. Theirs was the kind of relationship we always said the rest of us aspired to have and they were the two I came to in my darkest days. It just breaks my heart to think of him gone and to watch my sister and her kids as they try to comprehend this loss and rebuild their homelife without him. So, I am here with them in Colorado now, having driven through the night the Wednesday before last when his previously hopeful fight with cancer went suddenly very wrong. Now my siblings and I are just trying to help them ease into this awful new reality, in a world that is already so full of uncertainty and chaos. There is a lot to do. There is a lot to talk through. It has been, and will be, my priority for the next few weeks.
There is not much more to say at this point but I did want you to know why last week got missed and why there might be some irregularities in my posting and the answering of emails. I am still a one-woman business at this time, unable to hire anyone due to changes in California laws, not to mention the pandemic. So, while I do what I can for my family here, I can continue to fill orders and write these posts but timing might be a little off here and there. There is a comfort in the familiarity of writing these articles and dealing with day-to-day business things but there are definitely moments when the circumstances of our lives right now don’t allow for a regular schedule. I know you will forgive me if things get wonky and I thank you ahead of time for your understanding. I believe I will be back in California by mid-August and will figure out my new normal then.
I do hope you all are staying well, safe, and healthy and are caring for each other as best as we can in this crazy year.
Taking You Sideways
February 23, 2020
Inspirational Art
How often do you sit down at the studio table to create something and think, what am I going to do with the edges of my design? It’s unlikely to be the first thing you think of but does it come into play at all? This is something we have been exploring in the Virtual Art Box this month. We started with work on texturing edges for variation but this week, I thought we talk about the sides of edges!
As you know, we work in a 3-dimensional material and, therefore, even a flat pendant has not just a front and back, but sides and a top and bottom. Do you consider and treat those with anything like the consideration given to the front? Well, if you haven’t done that often to date, let’s make it a thing from now on!
Whether it’s a flat pendant, a bangle bracelet, the lip of a vase, or the base of a sculpture, those edges on your three-dimensional objects should be planned out just like every other surface. If it’s going to be seen, it should be well considered.
Side Effects
So, here’s an artist who obviously considers the side view (and the back and the top and the bottom) in every piece she creates. Sarah Shriver, known for her canes, doesn’t hesitate to add pattern and additional embellishments to all surfaces of her beads. The thick cut of the patterned layers on the back and snakes that work like frames in the front, bring the patterns into the side view, making the sides an integral part of her beads rather than an afterthought.
Sarah even treats rounded edges, such as lentil beads, with additional embellishment. See the twisted snake that encompasses her lentil beads in this post’s opening image? It not only adds pattern and energy to the piece, making them key components of the design, but they seal off the two halves of the lentil with no finishing of a seam to contend with.
Donna Kato is doing something similar to layering in these bangles below. There are several layers and patterns just on the side edge, but with the dome of the bangle surface curving into the side, it all becomes a unified design. Even if you don’t make bangles this thick and domed, you can certainly treat the edge with layers and patterns of this kind.
And what about thick slabs of mokume or canes? These would create a pattern for the back as well as the sides and can be used either as a base upon which to build the front view or it could be covered by a thin, solid sheet of clay and just be the pattern for the back and sides. I couldn’t find any photos of someone doing this in polymer although I’ve seen it. However, looking at examples in other materials can show you how good such an option can look.
This is mokume in metal, the original material for mokume gane, designed by an Australian company, Soklich & Co. Just look at how beautifully the layered pattern decorates the side. It would not be hard to imagine getting a similarly patterned side from thick slices of mokume off a stack whose layers were not rolled overly thin.
Of course, solid, straight cut, rounded, wrapped, or otherwise well finished edges may do just fine. It all depends on what the piece is about, what your intention is for it. Just consider that you have so very many options beyond solid colors for your edge’s sides.
If you want to dive in deeper with my wonderful group of Art Boxers, there is still time to get this month’s bundle and get a subscription for next month. Get it all right here!
Taking Off
I’m taking the weekend off to spend it with one of my amazing and beautiful children who is out visiting me. Our intention this weekend – to just relax and live in the moment. A coastal drive, tidepools, rock shops, gluten free bakeries, and yoga with baby goats in pajamas (the baby goats are PJs, not us … oh the cuteness!) are on the list to fill our few short days. So, if you reach out this weekend and I don’t answer, I’ll get you on Monday! I hope you have a beautiful week!
Back When We Were Young
September 4, 2017
Inspirational Art
Okay, maybe we weren’t so very young still just five years ago but man, it sure feels like a very long time ago. What Angela has done between then, as wonderful as the work is, and now, is really incredible. Here is the post from May 15th, 2012:
Angela Garrod is an emerging artist from the UK. She’s featured in our galleries in the next issue (order yours at http://thepolymerarts.com/Subscribe.html). Her newest piece here is not in the issue but it’s just fantastic–cool, light, springtime polymer. Her new website just went up, too: http://clayninepolymerdesigns.co.uk/
You can, of course, jump over to Angela’s website as above to compare old and new but I like doing so on her Flickr photostream where a clear timeline is shown as you move through the pages.
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Translucent Play, in 3 parts. Pt.3
November 16, 2016
Inspirational Art
Here is one more day of autumnal translucent beauties. Eva Haskova actually created these last April but they seem an appropriate homage to our quickly fading Fall season.
These bracelets are fairly simple in concept but so intriguing with their gradation of luminous colors and the short open tubes that allow a glimpse of the soft white of their translucent base. The color selection, similar to the piece by Jan Montarsi we saw last week, wisely includes a touch of cool color among all the rich warm hues to balance the intensity of the palette.
Holes and spaces seem to be dominating Eva’s explorations lately. You can see the evidence of this on her Facebook page as well as admire her other work on her Flickr photostream or her website.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Create something in either a completely cool palette or a wholly warm palette. Once you have most of the design planned or executed, try inserting colors of the other temperature. How does that change the feeling of the piece when you add just a little of the opposing color temperature? How about if you add a lot? Play with the contrast until you have something that speaks to you.
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Creatures from the Deep
January 20, 2016
Inspirational Art
As artists, we think of our imagination as a major muscle, if not the primary one used when we’re creating. But how much do you stretch that muscle?
In craft art, because we also have to create steps, a process, and consider function and durability, our minds spend a lot of time in the purely logical, problems solving sections of our brain. Not that the imagination and problem solving are not connected; they absolutely are. But pure imagination is something we don’t always practice. So, here is a little something to push you to do so.
These fun bracelets are the work of the ever creative Anke Humpert. Using translucent clay in a unique design and decorating it with sea creatures she made up is just the start here.
As she explained to me, “The bracelets have a design that glows in black light! That is why they are called deep-sea creature bracelets. You would not normally notice the night side of them, only if you go to a night club or something similar. They also have a special hinge. Most of it is made with polymer only very little metal involved.”
These bracelets, as it turns out, are the centerpiece for one of the three classes she will be teaching at the Cabin Fever Clay Arts Fest next month. In describing the class for prospective students, she says, “Since we do not know much about the deep seas, we will have fun and let our imagination run wild creating plants (or even animals?) as we imagine them.” And that freedom and use of the imagination is what inspired me to share this today and create a bit of a different challenge for those following along.
By the way, I do have a Flickr page for sharing the results of the challenges I’ve been posting, only I haven’t had time to snap pics of what I’ve done, so there’s nothing on it yet really. But if any of you want to get on while I catch up over here, I would love to see what you’ve been up to. Go here to join in!
Does Anke’s class intrigue you? She is also teaching her Big Beads and fun hand tool texturing techniques. She’s joined by a slew of amazing talent including Lisa Pavelka, Maureen Carlson, Dayle Doroshow, Lindly Haunani, Doreen Kassel, Jana Lehmann, Ann and Karen Mitchell, Nan Roche, Lynne Anne Schwarzenberg, and more. There is still room in almost every class, so, if you are interested, jump in while you have your pick of classes still. You can find the classes on this PDF and registration on their webpage.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Let your imagination run wild and recreate an image, motif, shape, or a faux effect you might otherwise recreate as it is seen in nature or as we expect it to be, making your own version. A rose with black petals, a plaid cat, turquoise in pink, purple leather, a square pendant with a chunk missing in the corner, or a peace symbol with Mickey Mouse ears. Just change it up and make it your own.
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Going Half Round
January 18, 2016
Inspirational Art, Technique tutorials
This week, I have pieces to share with you that have unexpected additions or changes. I think it is fantastic to mix things up, not only in our own world and work, but to step outside the expectations of what we think certain types of pieces should be. For instance, does a bead really have to be round? No, of course not. But should it at least be three-dimensionally symmetrical? Not really.
Katerina Sidorova has taken the round bead and literally reshaped it for this bracelet. The beads here were created by making perfectly round balls, cutting them in half, and adding thick cane slices on top that were carefully smoothed in to blend with the cut halves. The result is an off-balance half-round shape, or you might say it’s a ball half smashed, or you might call it acorn shaped even. What it is, though, is an unusual shape for a bead, which makes the gathering of the beautiful blue details quite intriguing. And really, the idea is pretty simple, but just that change makes us look twice because it does go beyond the expected round form.
Katerina has generously shared how she created these in this tutorial. She is the shop owner at Russia’s online polymer and jewelry supply shop KalinkaPolinka, which is also a great website full of articles, free tutorials, and links to other tutorials to explore.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Consider a form you regularly create and consider how you can change it to make it more interesting or intriguing. Sketch, cut, or sculpt your ideas.
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Clearly Shimmering
December 28, 2015
Inspirational Art
So, this week we recover from Christmas, get gifts returned and exchanged (if we are brave enough to stand in those long customer service lines!), and prepare for the New Year. It’s quite a shift from the family-focused holidays the rest of the season. New Year’s eve is usually for our friends more than our family and the parties or dinners out or drinks at the house are what’s on our mind about now. What to wear?! I know that becomes an overriding concern for many, so I thought I’d look for some blingy-ness that could help dress up any basic outfit. With the right jewelry, you can skip buying a new dress and just have everyone transfixed by your adornment, second only to your vivacious self, of course.
I was looking for shimmery and sparkling when I came across this lovely resin dominant bracelet. Hélène JeanClaude is a polymer artists who is big on transparency, but I am unsure just how much of this is polymer, if any. Not that it matters too terribly. The colors and reflection she is getting off the fabric texture buried in the resin and the shimmer of the colors make it quite eye-catching. You can see how, even with a lot of shadow around it, the colors and resin reflect and magnify any light that hits it. The flat space and angles of the resin help with this effect as well as distorting the pattern beneath, which adds to the variation of the blended and bleeding colors.
Hélène has been experimenting with this technique for the last two years, creating pendants and earrings with a more obvious use of polymer. If you could get your hands on either or both, that with the bracelet would be all you’d need to dress up a little black dress or even a shirt-and-jeans outfit. I know there isn’t enough time to get a hold of one of Hélène’s pieces, but maybe these can inspire some new pieces of your own you can whip up in the studio this week; bury shimmering clay treated with mica powders or foil leaf under translucent clay, liquid polymer, or resin if you have that on hand. There’s still time!
For further shimmery and translucent inspiration, you can find her other pieces using this technique and her explorations with translucent clay on her Flickr photostream and here on her blog.
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Takes Just a Little Twist
December 16, 2015
Inspirational Art
Simple ideas are often the most surprising. When I saw this bracelet as a thumbnail on my screen, I thought it was a cane or inlay, but when I went in for a larger look, I just broke into a big smile when I saw the way Petra Nemravka created this peek-a-boo color.
We have certainly seen the twisted strip in polymer before but maybe it’s the singularly bright bit of color combined with the continuous rhythmic repetition that a bangle bracelet allows that makes this feel so fresh and brilliant. The simplicity of the colors–a high contrast of black and white with highly saturated colors glimpsed between them–is not spoiled by further embellishment but is enhanced by a variation in the length and placement of the cuts. The barely-seen color is reinforced with the bracelet insides, but only the edge would regularly show when wearing it, so even that swathe of color would be doing its share of barely being revealed. I thought the idea was all around clever and well executed.
Petra is from my grandmother’s homeland in the Czech Republic. I do notice that I am often drawn to the work we see from that region and have wondered if it has anything to do with my background. But then there are pieces like this, very contemporary with a sense of design that is not regional but rather feels universal. So, I’m pretty sure there is simply a well propagated sense of good design and color in that part of the world that we are so often lucky enough to see come out in great polymer pieces. Petra is also an entrepreneur, running the online shop Nemravka.cz along with working on her wide variety of designs as you can see on her Flickr photostream.
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Vibrant Caning
January 13, 2015
Inspirational Art
This tutorial caught my eye, I have to admit, because of all the vibrant color. It’s also a nice form that undulates, not unlike those glowing bullseye canes that make the center of the outside slices.
The tutorial and the finished set you see here were created by Karina Formanova and include a number of simple yet effectively combined canes, as well as a how-to on creating the form and building up the layers it needs. Although you are supposedly just learning to create a bracelet, you learn some further composite caning, forming, finishing and color combining. So, really, it’s a pretty full little tutorial when it comes down to it.
You can find the full tutorial on Karina’s LiveMaster pages. Also, drop by her page of buttons and other fun bits also there on LiveMaster for other fun ideas and color combinations.
Understanding color strength in your materials becomes key to creating even gradations in blends like the one here in a bracelet by Jana Honnerova.
Are any of you having color information withdrawals after nearly 2 weeks since we’ve had the chance to chat about color? I did miss it myself! And I do apologize that I wasn’t able to post anything last week. I had hoped to at least post an explanation for my lack of an article but, unfortunately, it has been a very chaotic time in my family’s world and, honestly, I simply couldn’t focus enough to write. I’ll catch you up on my world at the end of this post for those of you who are interested but let’s talk color a bit first and get back on track.
Math versus Cooking
If you have been reading this blog since early June, you essentially have all the tools to successfully mix colors with control and confidence. At least in an ideal world. What I mean by that ominous statement is that the information you have does provide you with the basis for successful pigment based color mixing but now I am going to challenge you to take ideal information to an erratic and uncertain pigment world.
You see, the information I gave you appears, and in some circumstances is, pretty predictable. It’s practically math since you can, theoretically, determine that if you mix this much of one hue and that much of another hue, add a small portion of white, black, gray, or a complementary color to further tint, shade, or tone it, and you will get a specific predictable color. However, you are working with pigments. That is more like cooking where you work with a generic ingredient list, imprecise measuring tools, and primary components whose flavor and texture are subject to the whims of mother nature.
Our clays, paints, dyes, and inks may not be subject to mother nature but the manufacturing of these artistic ingredients are subject to product changes due to the availability of materials and fluctuations in quality, storage, age, and, of course, brands and lines within those brands. These variations will inevitably affect the characteristics of our color mixing materials.
I could tell you a lot more about the variations in materials and why they affect each other the way they do but I’m not going to do that at this moment. Right now, let’s just experiment with what we’ve learned and with the most dominant issue you run into as a result of these variations – color strength.
Knowing thy Material
One of the most basic things you will need to become familiar with in your materials is that some colors are much stronger than other colors when mixed. What I mean by this is that you can put equal parts of 2 different colors into a mix but when one is stronger than the other, it will dominate the mix and look like you put a lot more of that color in than the other. For instance, in a lot of art materials including polymer clay, darker colors tend to have more pigment and so when mixed with a lighter color, you can readily recognize the darker color but a lighter clay color may have less pigment or a lot of white in it so it gets kind of drowned out. More saturated colors tend to do the same thing, espeically when they are more saturated as well as darker than the other color it is being mixed with.
This is also often true between inexpensive and high-quality brands or lines. The manufactuers of an inexpensive line may use less pigment or poor quality colorants to help keep their costs down so they can offer the materials at a cheaper price. If you mix an inexpensive brand with a high-quality brand, you should not be surprised if you find the high quality one is generally stronger when mixing, espeically in colors of similar color value or saturation.
Getting Your Hands Colorfully Dirty
This week, I’m going to suggest that you try to become familiar with the stronger and weaker colors in your preferred brand and line of materials. This exercise assumes that you’re using opaque material such as clay or paint. The exercises work differently with translucent colors such as dyes and inks, which can get quite complex, so I would suggest you practice with only opaque materials for now. We’ll talk about translucent materials later.
Color Bias Chart
- Start by gathering a selection of colors. You can grab three primaries, three secondaries and black and white, or, if you’re ready for it, gather primary pairs based on the color biases we learned about in the last post. For bias pairs, pull 2 versions each of yellow, cyan, magenta. That means you’ll need a yellow that leans towards green and the other leaning towards orange, a cyan leaning towards blue and the other towards green, and a magenta that is more red while the other is more violet. You’ll want black and white as well.
- Then prepare your materials for mixing. If you’re using polymer clay, sheet each color in your pasta machine on the same thickness and cut with a single size punch cutter so that each “part” is one punch of clay. If you are working with paint, use approximately the same size daubs of paint and use them directly out of the tube or at least don’t dilute them.
- Start with just the black and white. Mix one-part white and one part black together. Mix them completely to get a gray.
- Pull out your grayscale or print the one here. (Click on the image to get a large version to print.) Check the resulting gray of your mix against the grayscale here. I’m guessing it’s going to be pretty darn dark instead of a middle gray (5 on my chart). In general, black clay or paint has a ton of pigment which means you probably need a lot of white to make a middle gray.
- Try it again but this time use one part black and four parts white. Now, where does that land on the value scale? If it’s still not a middle gray, make another mix, changing the proportions to include more white or more black depending on whether it needs to be lighter or darker to reach a middle gray.
- What was the final proportions to get that middle value? Make note of that. Now you’ll have an idea of how much a bit of black can darken a color or how much white you’re going to need to lighten a color. Yes, it will take practice to get something exactly as you want it but just becoming familiar with the strength of your black versus your white will get you there a lot quicker as you move into tinted and shaded color mixes.
- Now, choose a yellow and your darkest color (that is not black) from the colors you gathered. It’ll probably be the cyan that leans towards violet or a blue. Do the same thing. Start by mixing the exact same amounts and see which color seems to dominate the mix. Chances are, it will be the darker one, although in some lines, there are some pretty strong yellows and some pretty weak blues. What did you come up with? Adjust your proportions and mix them again until you have a sample where neither one seems to dominate. How much of the weaker color did you need to acheive that?
- Finally, mix a set of secondary colors if you gathered primary color biased pairs to work with, or mix tertiary colors if you gathered a set of primary and secondary colors in your materials. (Review this post if needed.) See how much you need of one color versus the other to create a secondary or tertiary color that neither color you mixed with dominates. Make mental or actual notes on which colors dominate a mix.
As you do this, you will begin to become truly familiar with the strength of the colors in your material. This will be absolutely essential when we get down to masterful color mixing. It also will save you a lot of wasted materials, allowing you to mix small amounts that don’t end up being large amounts because you have to keep adding the weaker color to get it where you want. In fact, when you start mixing with unfamiliar colors or a new brand, do this exercise to become quickly familiar with the variations in colors. And if you end up with some really yummy new colors doing these exercises, save the sample and note the proportions so you can mix it for a future project!
Worst Year Ever
2020. Worst … year … ever. I’m just putting that out there. It started with friends getting choked out from the terrible fires in Australia, then there was the pandemic, then the economic fallout, then there were the not new but spotlighted tragedies that led to racial protests and riots, and now, closer to home, my family and I are trying to fathom our own personal tragedy.
Many of you who follow me on Facebook already have heard that we lost an important family member last week–a brother-in-law who my siblings and I grew up with. He was no less than a brother to us and he married the sister I consider my closest confidant. Theirs was the kind of relationship we always said the rest of us aspired to have and they were the two I came to in my darkest days. It just breaks my heart to think of him gone and to watch my sister and her kids as they try to comprehend this loss and rebuild their homelife without him. So, I am here with them in Colorado now, having driven through the night the Wednesday before last when his previously hopeful fight with cancer went suddenly very wrong. Now my siblings and I are just trying to help them ease into this awful new reality, in a world that is already so full of uncertainty and chaos. There is a lot to do. There is a lot to talk through. It has been, and will be, my priority for the next few weeks.
There is not much more to say at this point but I did want you to know why last week got missed and why there might be some irregularities in my posting and the answering of emails. I am still a one-woman business at this time, unable to hire anyone due to changes in California laws, not to mention the pandemic. So, while I do what I can for my family here, I can continue to fill orders and write these posts but timing might be a little off here and there. There is a comfort in the familiarity of writing these articles and dealing with day-to-day business things but there are definitely moments when the circumstances of our lives right now don’t allow for a regular schedule. I know you will forgive me if things get wonky and I thank you ahead of time for your understanding. I believe I will be back in California by mid-August and will figure out my new normal then.
I do hope you all are staying well, safe, and healthy and are caring for each other as best as we can in this crazy year.
Read MoreHow often do you sit down at the studio table to create something and think, what am I going to do with the edges of my design? It’s unlikely to be the first thing you think of but does it come into play at all? This is something we have been exploring in the Virtual Art Box this month. We started with work on texturing edges for variation but this week, I thought we talk about the sides of edges!
As you know, we work in a 3-dimensional material and, therefore, even a flat pendant has not just a front and back, but sides and a top and bottom. Do you consider and treat those with anything like the consideration given to the front? Well, if you haven’t done that often to date, let’s make it a thing from now on!
Whether it’s a flat pendant, a bangle bracelet, the lip of a vase, or the base of a sculpture, those edges on your three-dimensional objects should be planned out just like every other surface. If it’s going to be seen, it should be well considered.
Side Effects
So, here’s an artist who obviously considers the side view (and the back and the top and the bottom) in every piece she creates. Sarah Shriver, known for her canes, doesn’t hesitate to add pattern and additional embellishments to all surfaces of her beads. The thick cut of the patterned layers on the back and snakes that work like frames in the front, bring the patterns into the side view, making the sides an integral part of her beads rather than an afterthought.
Sarah even treats rounded edges, such as lentil beads, with additional embellishment. See the twisted snake that encompasses her lentil beads in this post’s opening image? It not only adds pattern and energy to the piece, making them key components of the design, but they seal off the two halves of the lentil with no finishing of a seam to contend with.
Donna Kato is doing something similar to layering in these bangles below. There are several layers and patterns just on the side edge, but with the dome of the bangle surface curving into the side, it all becomes a unified design. Even if you don’t make bangles this thick and domed, you can certainly treat the edge with layers and patterns of this kind.
And what about thick slabs of mokume or canes? These would create a pattern for the back as well as the sides and can be used either as a base upon which to build the front view or it could be covered by a thin, solid sheet of clay and just be the pattern for the back and sides. I couldn’t find any photos of someone doing this in polymer although I’ve seen it. However, looking at examples in other materials can show you how good such an option can look.
This is mokume in metal, the original material for mokume gane, designed by an Australian company, Soklich & Co. Just look at how beautifully the layered pattern decorates the side. It would not be hard to imagine getting a similarly patterned side from thick slices of mokume off a stack whose layers were not rolled overly thin.
Of course, solid, straight cut, rounded, wrapped, or otherwise well finished edges may do just fine. It all depends on what the piece is about, what your intention is for it. Just consider that you have so very many options beyond solid colors for your edge’s sides.
If you want to dive in deeper with my wonderful group of Art Boxers, there is still time to get this month’s bundle and get a subscription for next month. Get it all right here!
Taking Off
I’m taking the weekend off to spend it with one of my amazing and beautiful children who is out visiting me. Our intention this weekend – to just relax and live in the moment. A coastal drive, tidepools, rock shops, gluten free bakeries, and yoga with baby goats in pajamas (the baby goats are PJs, not us … oh the cuteness!) are on the list to fill our few short days. So, if you reach out this weekend and I don’t answer, I’ll get you on Monday! I hope you have a beautiful week!
Read MoreOkay, maybe we weren’t so very young still just five years ago but man, it sure feels like a very long time ago. What Angela has done between then, as wonderful as the work is, and now, is really incredible. Here is the post from May 15th, 2012:
Angela Garrod is an emerging artist from the UK. She’s featured in our galleries in the next issue (order yours at http://thepolymerarts.com/Subscribe.html). Her newest piece here is not in the issue but it’s just fantastic–cool, light, springtime polymer. Her new website just went up, too: http://clayninepolymerdesigns.co.uk/
You can, of course, jump over to Angela’s website as above to compare old and new but I like doing so on her Flickr photostream where a clear timeline is shown as you move through the pages.
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Read MoreHere is one more day of autumnal translucent beauties. Eva Haskova actually created these last April but they seem an appropriate homage to our quickly fading Fall season.
These bracelets are fairly simple in concept but so intriguing with their gradation of luminous colors and the short open tubes that allow a glimpse of the soft white of their translucent base. The color selection, similar to the piece by Jan Montarsi we saw last week, wisely includes a touch of cool color among all the rich warm hues to balance the intensity of the palette.
Holes and spaces seem to be dominating Eva’s explorations lately. You can see the evidence of this on her Facebook page as well as admire her other work on her Flickr photostream or her website.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Create something in either a completely cool palette or a wholly warm palette. Once you have most of the design planned or executed, try inserting colors of the other temperature. How does that change the feeling of the piece when you add just a little of the opposing color temperature? How about if you add a lot? Play with the contrast until you have something that speaks to you.
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Read MoreAs artists, we think of our imagination as a major muscle, if not the primary one used when we’re creating. But how much do you stretch that muscle?
In craft art, because we also have to create steps, a process, and consider function and durability, our minds spend a lot of time in the purely logical, problems solving sections of our brain. Not that the imagination and problem solving are not connected; they absolutely are. But pure imagination is something we don’t always practice. So, here is a little something to push you to do so.
These fun bracelets are the work of the ever creative Anke Humpert. Using translucent clay in a unique design and decorating it with sea creatures she made up is just the start here.
As she explained to me, “The bracelets have a design that glows in black light! That is why they are called deep-sea creature bracelets. You would not normally notice the night side of them, only if you go to a night club or something similar. They also have a special hinge. Most of it is made with polymer only very little metal involved.”
These bracelets, as it turns out, are the centerpiece for one of the three classes she will be teaching at the Cabin Fever Clay Arts Fest next month. In describing the class for prospective students, she says, “Since we do not know much about the deep seas, we will have fun and let our imagination run wild creating plants (or even animals?) as we imagine them.” And that freedom and use of the imagination is what inspired me to share this today and create a bit of a different challenge for those following along.
By the way, I do have a Flickr page for sharing the results of the challenges I’ve been posting, only I haven’t had time to snap pics of what I’ve done, so there’s nothing on it yet really. But if any of you want to get on while I catch up over here, I would love to see what you’ve been up to. Go here to join in!
Does Anke’s class intrigue you? She is also teaching her Big Beads and fun hand tool texturing techniques. She’s joined by a slew of amazing talent including Lisa Pavelka, Maureen Carlson, Dayle Doroshow, Lindly Haunani, Doreen Kassel, Jana Lehmann, Ann and Karen Mitchell, Nan Roche, Lynne Anne Schwarzenberg, and more. There is still room in almost every class, so, if you are interested, jump in while you have your pick of classes still. You can find the classes on this PDF and registration on their webpage.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Let your imagination run wild and recreate an image, motif, shape, or a faux effect you might otherwise recreate as it is seen in nature or as we expect it to be, making your own version. A rose with black petals, a plaid cat, turquoise in pink, purple leather, a square pendant with a chunk missing in the corner, or a peace symbol with Mickey Mouse ears. Just change it up and make it your own.
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Read MoreThis week, I have pieces to share with you that have unexpected additions or changes. I think it is fantastic to mix things up, not only in our own world and work, but to step outside the expectations of what we think certain types of pieces should be. For instance, does a bead really have to be round? No, of course not. But should it at least be three-dimensionally symmetrical? Not really.
Katerina Sidorova has taken the round bead and literally reshaped it for this bracelet. The beads here were created by making perfectly round balls, cutting them in half, and adding thick cane slices on top that were carefully smoothed in to blend with the cut halves. The result is an off-balance half-round shape, or you might say it’s a ball half smashed, or you might call it acorn shaped even. What it is, though, is an unusual shape for a bead, which makes the gathering of the beautiful blue details quite intriguing. And really, the idea is pretty simple, but just that change makes us look twice because it does go beyond the expected round form.
Katerina has generously shared how she created these in this tutorial. She is the shop owner at Russia’s online polymer and jewelry supply shop KalinkaPolinka, which is also a great website full of articles, free tutorials, and links to other tutorials to explore.
Inspirational Challenge of the Day: Consider a form you regularly create and consider how you can change it to make it more interesting or intriguing. Sketch, cut, or sculpt your ideas.
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Read MoreSo, this week we recover from Christmas, get gifts returned and exchanged (if we are brave enough to stand in those long customer service lines!), and prepare for the New Year. It’s quite a shift from the family-focused holidays the rest of the season. New Year’s eve is usually for our friends more than our family and the parties or dinners out or drinks at the house are what’s on our mind about now. What to wear?! I know that becomes an overriding concern for many, so I thought I’d look for some blingy-ness that could help dress up any basic outfit. With the right jewelry, you can skip buying a new dress and just have everyone transfixed by your adornment, second only to your vivacious self, of course.
I was looking for shimmery and sparkling when I came across this lovely resin dominant bracelet. Hélène JeanClaude is a polymer artists who is big on transparency, but I am unsure just how much of this is polymer, if any. Not that it matters too terribly. The colors and reflection she is getting off the fabric texture buried in the resin and the shimmer of the colors make it quite eye-catching. You can see how, even with a lot of shadow around it, the colors and resin reflect and magnify any light that hits it. The flat space and angles of the resin help with this effect as well as distorting the pattern beneath, which adds to the variation of the blended and bleeding colors.
Hélène has been experimenting with this technique for the last two years, creating pendants and earrings with a more obvious use of polymer. If you could get your hands on either or both, that with the bracelet would be all you’d need to dress up a little black dress or even a shirt-and-jeans outfit. I know there isn’t enough time to get a hold of one of Hélène’s pieces, but maybe these can inspire some new pieces of your own you can whip up in the studio this week; bury shimmering clay treated with mica powders or foil leaf under translucent clay, liquid polymer, or resin if you have that on hand. There’s still time!
For further shimmery and translucent inspiration, you can find her other pieces using this technique and her explorations with translucent clay on her Flickr photostream and here on her blog.
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Read MoreSimple ideas are often the most surprising. When I saw this bracelet as a thumbnail on my screen, I thought it was a cane or inlay, but when I went in for a larger look, I just broke into a big smile when I saw the way Petra Nemravka created this peek-a-boo color.
We have certainly seen the twisted strip in polymer before but maybe it’s the singularly bright bit of color combined with the continuous rhythmic repetition that a bangle bracelet allows that makes this feel so fresh and brilliant. The simplicity of the colors–a high contrast of black and white with highly saturated colors glimpsed between them–is not spoiled by further embellishment but is enhanced by a variation in the length and placement of the cuts. The barely-seen color is reinforced with the bracelet insides, but only the edge would regularly show when wearing it, so even that swathe of color would be doing its share of barely being revealed. I thought the idea was all around clever and well executed.
Petra is from my grandmother’s homeland in the Czech Republic. I do notice that I am often drawn to the work we see from that region and have wondered if it has anything to do with my background. But then there are pieces like this, very contemporary with a sense of design that is not regional but rather feels universal. So, I’m pretty sure there is simply a well propagated sense of good design and color in that part of the world that we are so often lucky enough to see come out in great polymer pieces. Petra is also an entrepreneur, running the online shop Nemravka.cz along with working on her wide variety of designs as you can see on her Flickr photostream.
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Read MoreThis tutorial caught my eye, I have to admit, because of all the vibrant color. It’s also a nice form that undulates, not unlike those glowing bullseye canes that make the center of the outside slices.
The tutorial and the finished set you see here were created by Karina Formanova and include a number of simple yet effectively combined canes, as well as a how-to on creating the form and building up the layers it needs. Although you are supposedly just learning to create a bracelet, you learn some further composite caning, forming, finishing and color combining. So, really, it’s a pretty full little tutorial when it comes down to it.
You can find the full tutorial on Karina’s LiveMaster pages. Also, drop by her page of buttons and other fun bits also there on LiveMaster for other fun ideas and color combinations.
