Strutting forward

This proud, colorful rooster from illustrator/artist Linda Webb (CreeksideStudio) brings our first week of the year to an energetic end.

With ruffled orange feathers and touches of gold, her wild polymer creature struts forward. Linda’s given him the can-do attitude that we’ll need as we barrel into 2017.

Linda brought a big plastic bag filled with failed projects to a fall show and her rejects became a hit. To her surprise, everyone was fascinated by her mistakes.

“I brought this ragtag bag of duds with a goal of showing the young people at my creation station that the mistakes I made while learning are not complete failures,” she says. “The things that went wrong for me while I perfected my art and the hard work are part of the process.” Good thing to remember.

Here’s her failure blog post. Linda’s been building an Instagram gallery of her mosaics along with her website and Flickr.

Bringing polymer alive

Pre-holiday jitters? Nope, that’s Gene Wilder during his famous “It’s alive!” moment rendered by Washington, DC illustrator Joseph Barbaccia and made entirely of extruded strings of polymer.

You’ll have to look closely to see how the intricately interwoven colors blend into a dimensional mosaic.

A powerful portrait of a soldier (pictured here) was selected to appear in Lurzer’s International 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide 2016/2017.

Read more about Joseph on Facebook, SaatchiArt, and his site.

Mixed media curls

Sweet gum tree pods litter the sidewalks at this time of year. Polymer illustrator Helena Bogosian found a creative use for her stash of dried seed pods. They make amazingly fetching curls and more.

Prowl through Helena’s Facebook and Instagram sites to see how she’s turned polymer and the bounty from her sweet gum tree into moody, haunting portraits.

Bits and pieces

There’s so much energy in this series from France’s Caroline Cornic Isola (Klick-Art) that it’s hard to know where to focus. Your eyes dance between shapes and colors and land intermittently on black and white bits.

Thin lines lead you between elements. When you dive in for a closer look you’ll see that the colors aren’t solid but mottled and graduated. Each pendant is a little Miro-like composition.

Caroline bounces between comic illustration and painterly compositions in her polymer work. Look at her exuberant pieces on Facebook, Etsy and Pinterest.

Polymer tribute

Colorado artist/illustrator Tammy Durham is revisiting her favorite classic painters in polymer. Currently she is paying homage to Alphonse Mucha. Czech painter Mucha was one of the leaders of French Art Nouveau beginning in 1895.

These panels (Primrose on the left and Feather on the right) measure about 10 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ and are created with carefully layered strips of clay plus extruded and sculpted bits that reinterpret the original art.

You can click on the images for a closer look and browse through Tammy’s Facebook feed for a glimpse of her work in progress. You can also see her work on her site and on Pinterest.

3D celebrations

The UK’s Erica Sturla creates 3D colorful scenes from polymer clay setting her characters against painted canvas backgrounds.

Australian doll maker Shirley Dougan spotted Erica’s work and greeting cards in the gift shop at the British Museum in London and sent us the link. Small world, eh?

Here’s Erica on Facebook. Many of her works are commissions that celebrate special family events.

Retreat giveaway

All you have to do is “Like” Polyform’s Facebook page and you’re entered in a raffle for a free ticket to the Polymer Clay Adventure Virtual Retreat in January. Click before November 30 and you could win!

Look who’s trending

The UK’s Lizzie Campbell (Clay Disarray) has thrown polymer right into the middle of popular culture with her Breaking Bad Polymer Poster.

“Much of my personal work is inspired by my love of films – particularly horror and dark genre, as well as slightly smaller independent films – and all of the ‘polymer posters’ I’ve worked on are for films that have creatively inspired me in some way,” she admits.

She only began with polymer a year ago and her polymer popstars, politicians and posters are quite the rage. What fun to flip through them on her site, store and in recent press. Even her business name makes you smile.

Polymer fonts

Two lovely alphabets surfaced this week. The one at the left is an Easter font from Zim and Zou (Lucie Thomas and Thibault Zimmermann), a French duo that usually stick to paper sculpture for their very famous illustrations.

This polymer work (they say plasticine but I refuse to believe it) is overgrown, lush and inviting. Their illustrations look like they should be tried in polymer and I wonder if we’ll see more of their work in this vein.

The second alphabet is from Raku Inoue who developed a charming monster alphabet. This Canadian artist was born in Japan and he uses polymer as a way to bridge the gap between painting and photography.

You simply have to scroll down through his bio that explains how he went clazy, as he calls it. His videos give you an even more intense look at his process.

I saved these sites until Friday so that the extended browsing they require wouldn’t interfere with your work or home life. I was entranced by these masterful storytellers and you may be too. Enjoy your weekend.

Buddha nature polymer

Everybody’s back at the gym as Joseph Barbaccia reminds us with his Exercising Your Buddha Nature illustration in polymer. Lately his illustrations have all been created by using thin strands of polymer as strokes of color.

Joseph must be in touch with his own Buddha nature to compose such meticulous polymer works.

He took a less appealing view of the body in his 2010 Integration series of works. His Obesity fuses the belly (the hair is his own) with a kitchen grater.

Joseph lives in Virginia and has worked for 35 years in graphic design and as an art director.

Space girl polymer

PCD was happy to rediscover Tammy Durham, a polymer illustrator who now lives in Fort Collins, CO. (We last saw her in 2010.)

Her Space Girl on a Mission panel is complex and cheery and she shares the details of her process on her Facebook page. See how she sketches and plans and tries to keep a dust-free workspace. Tammy also keeps an archive of her earlier work on FB.

Tammy’s art appealed to me as I immersed myself in editing and uploading video for my upcoming Craftcast class on extrusions next Wednesday. We can all identify with Space Girl.

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