This cane from Australia’s Robyn (shop.Kaori) sucked me in like quicksand in a B grade adventure movie. It’s pulled me in repeatedly.
What’s going on here? The neon colors, the black background, the over/under! How does it work? I’m lost in the jungle. Robyn’s been working with polymer for nearly 30 years so she knows her way around.
I give up. Looks like I’m going to have to grab Patreon to save myself.
No, no, no…that’s not me on the cover of the beautiful Polymer Week magazine! That’s the evocative, delicate polymer sculpture of Israel’s Edith Fischer-Katz.
Lucie
S?truncova? did interview me for this issue. I blush at how glamorous she made me look (then I flip through the pages again to make sure it’s me.)
But more to the point, these quarterly magazines are collector’s items because they elevate polymer art to the level of fine art that we have dreamed of. The paper is slick and weighty. The photography is stunning. The quality of the work is breath-taking. The tutorials are first-rate.
I don’t know how Lucie and her crew do it. Snatch up these gems for your collection.
Polymer artists have long tried to replicate the soft blurry edges that are the hallmark of copper enameled pieces.
Low fire (cold) enamel powders were rumored to be the answer but my vials of powders went to the back of a bottom drawer several years ago after some messy attempts.
Croatia’s Nikolina Otrzan makes me want to dig out my powders and give it another go. Her tutorial shows me where I went wrong. She uses liquid polymer, layers and other tricks to keep the powders under control.
Nikolina has lots more patience than I do. She loads up her instructions with photos and steps. I pare them down for my experiments to see how they fit my style.
Imitative enamels may be the next big thing. If this rings your chimes, now’s the time to explore.
Friends came back from a weekend class with Kentucky’s Leslie Blackford gushing about how much they’d learned about clay…and themselves.
There’s something touching, innocent, and vulnerable in Leslie’s unending series of loveable animal sculptures. How does she do that?
For the next few weeks, she will show how she imbues simple sculpted animals with irresistible qualities.
Class details are on Facebook. The tutorials are accessible, inexpensive and just the kind of play your inner child may be yearning for in rough times.
Maryland’s Jeffrey Lloyd Dever presents his Passage Obscura. Hanging from a long pin back, reminiscent of a medal hung on a presentation ribbon, this single round medallion has backfilled surface detailing,
For Jeff, the piece serves witness to the forces at work in a chaotic world, to obscure vision and all too often smother hope.
Two bright rays of hope come from the tutorials that educate and distract us. Click through France’s Sonya Girodon’s textures here and Utah’s Jana Roberts Benzon faux alcohol inks here. They share their inspiration free for all during tough times.
Stay strong!
Croatia’s Nikolina Otrzan (Orsons World) tempts us with a new downloadable tutorial coming out at the end of the month. On her slim collaged tube pendants, dots join stripes along with distressed solids.
Her tutorials are full of surprising methods, copious photos, and sophisticated designs. This could be an end of the year gift to yourself that will properly launch your skills into 2020.
Here she is on Facebook and Etsy.
Neighbor Nancy Nearing shared this spiral bracelet with our coffee group and it brought smiles all around.
Nancy’s bracelet is a combination of what she learned from Kim Korringa’s scrap tutorial and Maggie Maggio’s flattened split rings (see videos here and here). The piece started with Nancy’s scraps.
The mod look of this virtual collaboration takes the ideas in a different direction. Mixing and matching ideas keeps our community evolving.
The Netherlands’ Lucie Blaauw has taken classes from an impressive list of polymer artists. This recent necklace and earrings set is from a Nikolina Otrzan tutorial.
If you click through Lucie’s Instagram photos you’ll see her style change and her techniques improve as she continues to explore. Her works have become bolder and more dramatic and she injects what she creates with her own voice, no matter whose methods she’s trying.
Best of all, she finishes a piece in each workshop so she can track her progress. Most of us have a drawer full of abandoned efforts. You’ll like her style and love her persistence.
This gorgeous chunky collar from Chicago’s Marina Rios (fancifuldevices) includes thirty-one handmade polymer clay beads with textures, pits, facets, and inclusions in a soft array of greens and pinks graduated in size from large to small.
To ensure a smooth visual transition between beads Marina created special spacers including vintage rhinestone rings and gemstone rondelles. The necklace is adjustable from 19 to 21 inches.
As I composed this post, her lovely spring-like necklace sold on Etsy but have a look anyway.
Marina shares some of her methods in tutorials. If you’re thinking about making faceted beads, review her free step-by-steps here on Instagram.
Rebecca Watkins turns bright beads into cheery birds. They’re 2-inches long from beak to tail and she whitewashed the newest batch to give them more flutter.
Rebecca is an experimenter and you can easily spend more time than you intended reading about the methods she’s come up with for embossing and metallics and etching and more.
She shares all the details (lots of videos) of her late night adventures in polymer. Track her down on her blog and Facebook and Etsy.
