Washington’s Leah Lester started out as a cake decorator. In 2010 she decided to put the monsters she loves on the top of a cake.
Her friends went wild and asked her to make them out of something more durable.
Since then Leah’s created thousands of Little Lazies and sold them to her Etsy fans. Her most recent batch will be for sale on Big Cartel on Sept 28 with others on Facebook and Instagram.
Her time-lapse videos will kick off your week at high speed.
Renan Florindo from Brazil keeps us thinking of the wild oceans. His Baleia Azul (Blue Whale) is sculpted in curving flight.
Renan added details with paint and mounted the polymer sculpt on a watercolor background. You can watch him add the details on Instagram.
The subject matter for Renan’s art is usually anatomical hearts which he sculpts and draws in incredible detail and unusual settings. I wish I understood more about his focus on hearts but his writing is sparse and the translations from Portuguese don’t help.
This powerful endangered blue whale requires no translation.
If you tracked monster storms all weekend you may be in the mood to purge your world of all its monsters.
Watch as Michigan’s Anthony, Ace of Clay, turns his demons into pins. With ferocious teeth, of course.
Some texture, a few wrinkles and a dusting of dark shadows around the eyes heightens the ominous look. Some have sunlight color-changing eyes, others glow in the dark.
Anthony also keeps switch plates, phone cases and sculpted figures in stock. If you’re squeamish, you’ll prefer his colorful imitative sugar skulls. Look on Instagram, Etsy, and Facebook.
Does this sculpture from Tina Yu belong in PCD’s whimsy week? “I used to collect Barbies when I was little and growing up I was always fascinated with unique and one-of-a-kind ball jointed dolls,” says Tina.
She is a Chinese-raised New York-based artist/designer who studied graphic design at Pratt Institute. This twenty-something admits that even though she often spends up to nine hours a day working on her sculptures, she doesn’t plan out what she will do beforehand.
Whimsy is defined as extravagant, fanciful, playful, or odd. Her works surely check off those boxes. And she has hundreds of thousands of followers. She’s struck a nerve and amassed an enthusiastic following on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and elsewhere.
How do you explain the fascination of this whimsy?
It’s summer and you know what that means. Sharks and other sea creatures will be in the news. Like this strange polymer species from Estelle Marchal’s Les Ptitsmobiles.
Estelle moved to Grenoble, France where she’s unpacked and back in the creature business. A scroll through her Facebook collection of stylized octopuses, carnivorous plants, stingrays and other oddities is sure to make you smile. They will soon populate her shop and her Instagram page.
She often turns her creations into mobiles that protect children while they sleep. Estelle is a molecular biologist when she’s not making sharks. The polymer community attracts lots of scientist/artists who enjoy reinterpreting the lifeforms they work with.
You picked right up on Friday’s telepathic post! Such finely tuned PCD readers! Glad we’re on the same wavelength.
One reader says that Victoria’s Gera Scott Chandler’s fish look like they need comment bubbles. Maybe you can figure out what Gera’s fish are saying while I finish a fun weekend. Here they are on Facebook.
Loretta Lam keeps me coasting on photos taken at last week’s conference. These lightweight sculpted leaves are not-quite-finished samples for an upcoming European class.
Even unsanded the shapes were silky smooth. Loretta lays thin fabric-like veneers over FIMOairlight bases.
Thank you for your comments on yesterday’s post that taught me another meaning of the word goolies. While the creatures in the Christi Friesen post are cute, some goolies are certainly better kept not so free!
Christie Friesen is possessed by Goolies, small polymer sculptures that fly from her fingers.
In Virginia an admiring crowd gathered around the oven, waiting to adopt the figments of Christi’s imagination. She really can’t say where or how the Goolies originate or what they mean. You can see on her Facebook page that she’s made legions of them. And they keep coming.
What do the gremlins, grouches and goofballs that live in your imagination look like? Have you ever tried to capture them in polymer?
New Zealand’s Amba Jacobs (TheLittleMew) makes small sculptures and charms based on games and comics and popular culture icons. Here the 2.5″x3″ Dusky Sky Lantern Dragon’s body and feather-like scales are rendered lovingly in pastel sunset colors. It was one of three sculptures auctioned off recently.
When she was a child, Amba liked to rescue kittens, drawn by their vulnerable mews. “My spirit charms are also small, sweet and fragile creatures who want to be adopted,” she says.
She sells her creatures in several online venues (Etsy, Facebook, Instagram, her blog). She shares her methods on her YouTube channel.
Her attention to detail is apparent not only in the carefully crafted works but also in her approach to placing them in good homes. Do you feel like your artwork is up for adoption?
We end our week of characters with a tip of the straw hat to small farmers. These guys are from Oregon’s Gesine Kratzner. She’s an artist/illustrator/animator.
On her website you can see how she moves easily between drawing and sculpting. See these guys in action here.
Her works include Squids, Grumpy Pets, Worry Warts, Astroturf Planets and more strange creatures. You’ll find them on Facebook and Etsy then smile your way through Pinterest and Instagram.
Nothing like a good chuckle to get you in a weekend mood. Join us on StudioMojo if you need more smiles.
