Lisa Clarke (PolkaDotCottage) brings families together on the Christmas tree. Her jaunty characters have big smiles and quirky clothes.
Catching kids and pets together for a picture might be tough but Lisa gathers them into one cheery, memorable ornament that will be treasured. She’s stopped taking orders for this year so it looks like you’ll have to take a stab at a family ornament yourself.
Check out her polymer crochet hooks, tutorials, and other goodies.
This framed 4″ polymer tile from Australia’s Leah Radlett (leaha_radlett) is entitled A Mother’s Prayer. The shades of gray and intense gaze feel solemn and serious.
Leah admits she’s been troubled about mothers and their children in these tough times. Leah rolls balls of color by hand. She calls them her bubble paintings. She recently added a number of new scenes and animals in this style to her Etsy site.
It’s hard to look away from this polymer.
Netherland’s Andrha Simonis (Andrhacula) has her hands full, but she squeezed the making of this family portrait into her schedule.
“Took forever with everything having to be done in between homeschooling and all that,” she says. “You see me in my characteristic pose of annoying my husband with a witch’s accessory.”
This hilarious, loving look at her family constellation a la Tim Burton charms us. Andrha’s FB page begins with this alert, “I’m not a morning person or a night person. There are a few minutes in the afternoon where I’m decent. That’s about it.” Candid polymer! Revenge polymer! What fun! We can relate.
Now what? We need to take a breath or two and get our bearings. This week StudioMojo will take a clear-eyed look at what’s happening in our community. Wow, there’s some good stuff out there! Your mojo’s been waiting for you! Join us.
Delaware’s
Joseph Barbaccia first drew this Notorious portrait using a digital pen and Photoshop. Then a client commissioned it as a 15″x15″ polymer work.
Watch how Joseph sets up his extruded string palette and gets to work.
He glides smoothly between digital drawing and polymer string mosaic. As you come closer, strokes become thin lines of polymer transformed into a stunning image.
Even his business card uses a polymer thread for a logo.
Belgium’s Nancy Blindeman (Art BeYou) has started making faces in polymer lately.
The illustrations of Patrick Nagel and the music of Duran Duran inspired Nancy to work in a new way and it suits her well. She builds up extruded strings of clay into a portrait.
She says of this character, “Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand.” When an artist can see and hear and her characters, we can sense that aliveness in the work.
Even more than the size of this face cane from Warsaw’s Sacra Argilla, the dramatic dark pose, and dense background draw us in.
Sacra adds layer upon layer of slim lengths of clay around the portrait. At the smallest size, the background still vibrates with color.
The project took over 135 hours and she documents her process on YouTube and Instagram. This cane will last forever!
This is Sacra’s second try at the project. Her first one in 2017 was a disaster. Imagine devoting that much time and energy to a single project! It must resonate deeply with her.
What project won’t leave you alone?
Looking for a free tutorial that will bring you back into the present and give you a stress break? Florida’s Alice Stroppel offers just that. Access the tutorial here.
Squirt polymer through the spaghetti-like disks (the ones with multiple holes) of your extruder and get busy making a portrait from the strings. No, extruder? Roll long snakes by hand or use your medium of choice.
The tutorial is broken into four short steps. It may be just the thing you need to get your hands back on clay.
Alice wants to create an online gallery of “Self Portraits in the Time of Isolation” Add yours via the link. Any media welcome.
Studio Mojo will look at helping you deal with the shockwave of events and keep you looking at “What is” instead of getting stuck with the less predictable and less helpful “What if”. Join us.
I know very little about Cyprus’ Arieta Stavrodou except that she’s a strong, in-your-face, badass kinda woman.
And I want to paint like she does with polymer. Her 5″ x 6″ portrait is aggressive, driven, forceful with a soft underbelly and a discerning eye.
We’ve covered her wild teapots and other quirky works but her latest polymer paintings reveal something more.
See the power in her recent Instagram and follow her earlier works on Facebook.
This polymer self-portrait is by South Australia’s Marni Southam (Oleander Avenue). Marni was responding to a PolyCollective and Friclay challenge to create a self-portrait.
They’re such a big, young, media-savvy bunch that it’s hard to keep up with all that they do online. There’s a Friclay Live event in Brisbane in April.
Does Marni’s layered and textured view of herself make you want to try a selfie? It could be a clever addition to promotional materials and signage.
“Home is the memories we make on the inside. The outside is a symbol of those memories,” explains Nashville’s Lindsay Black (oddlyand company).
She specializes in polymer home portraits and she’ll even put up your decorations as she did here.
You can imagine why Lindsay limits her custom homes with their precise details to just a few. She’ll re-open her shop on Etsy in February for next year’s orders.
