Still Ripples...

The photograph is an image of a kettlehole in a stream in Northern Maine where my husband and I travel each August to escape before I head back into the art classroom. I tinted the black and white image slightly blue in the water for effect and am not sure if I like it or not... The polymer set is another attempt at a ripple/brain cane. This one went a little awry - I tried to use the traditional folding and pleating of the brain cane technique, but added some gradient blend areas as well as other fill. I'm not sure yet. Maybe I have to get rid of the black and white in the cane completely and work with more subtle blues and greys like in the photograph. Thoughts?

More blues...

This is another water image. When I sit on the edge of a brook, river or any body of water the rippling water and color play is amazing. This print image is not a full final work; usually before I create a print I play around with color, texture and ideas in a sketchbook or on the computer. This is a "sketch" of a possible ripple print. The pendant is one of the brain canes I was playing with for a time... brain canes are fun and the color possibilities are endless. I wonder if I could get a more watery ripple effect with more practice.

Blue hue

I had been posting about wildflowers for quite a few posts and have decided to go in a different direction for a time. This print is from an image of a brook on the backside of Dix Mountain in the Adirondacks. I like close up views of brooks and the tumbling water, it's amazing the amount of color changes and swirls you can see if you look long enough. The pendant and bracelet are a set that I created with mokume gane slices based on these blue hues. The pendant is stand alone at the moment, usually I slide it on a sliver chain, the bracelet is strung with the mokume bead and laborodite chips. I like how mokume gane comes out with polymer clay - I'll have to think of new color variations.

A splash of yellow.

It's a grey and dreary day in the Northeast, so I've decided to post in the brightest of colors I could. The print is from the same wildflower series as the last post, it is a Sundrop and the original image was captured early in the morning with dew still on the petals. It was a beautiful addition to the wildflower series. The print inspired one of my first attempts at an image transfer and in the process, became a bracelet. This is probably one of the more direct links of my prints and polymer.

Purple Blooms.

There are beautiful wildflowers at the barn and it is truly amazing what you can catch with a supermacro zoom. The images from the various flowers inspired a series of ten prints. The print here is spotted-joe-pieweed and I believe it is very thistle like. Polymer clay lends itself to such color mixing that you can match colors so well with images. So... what better jewelry to pair the print with that this purple swish & swirl necklace?

Complex Moss

Sometimes in the mountains it's the commanding view from the peaks that catch my eye. And then there are the times where my attention doesn't move more than two inches from the ground. I had taken several pictures of reindeer moss and lichens during a recent hike and the fabulous greens and lines inspired my first kaliedoscope cane. The cane then became a bracelet with more left over for other pieces in the future.

Layers in the Mountains...

It's amazing looking out over the vista from a mountain top. The layers of the peaks in front of you just wave away with layer after layer, it's beautiful. One of the images that I took from the peak of Giant Mountain is due to become a future print... but it's already inspired a necklace with waves of faux jade. I was testing out a faux tutorial and used a few of the slices to create this pendant.

Texture in both.

The texture is part of a print of a waterfall near our barn in the Adirondacks. The sun had hit the water, the depth of the water was just right, the rocks had just enough quartz in them to sparkle... it made the perfect photo - and then a wonderful print. Later on in the studio I was playing around with scraps and attempts of miscellaneous projects and happened to combine colors in such a way that it brought those rocks back to mind. Made a nice bead or two!

The Start

Two of my favorite mediums to work in are polymer clay and screen printing. I find my inspiration everywhere and I hope that this blog becomes the gathering spot for ideas, interesting thoughts and wonderful imagery. So here is the start of the blog with two images of my work. The barn image is a print from the past year and the jewelry piece follows a retro cane tutorial inspired by the funky fall colors outside my studio. This year had more orange and limes in the colors of the leaves... wonder why?