Monday 23 May 2011

think BIG...


This month challenge word on creativeeveryday is "BIG", there is a lovely guest post about being BIG from Jennifer Lee.
For me thinking BIG means letting go of my sens of obligation and allow myself to be creative just for fun and to please myself not the others for a change. So as I love baking cookies and despite the fact I am on the diet, I made whole bowl of one of my favorite short-pastry ones with marzipan. I love the process of creating in the kitchen and I feel really relaxed during it. Now I need some of my friends to come over for a cup of tea:))

Saturday 21 May 2011

learning to waste...

"(...)If you try and it doesn't work You'll try a different way next time. Doing is better than not doing, and if you do something badly you'll learn to do it better(...)"

For a long time one of my worst fears was "what if I will waste..." and here you can put whatever you want, the material, paper, paint, time, energy, what if this won't be good enough...so I was keeping my art stuff closed tightly in a box for a time when I will be proficient enough to put them in a good use..and in this way of course I've never become proficient in any of my hidden passions like for example watercolor - the only consolation is that I know I am not alone ,who at least once, was thinking the same...
Anyway, a few years later and I still get this feeling sometimes but finally I started to use my resources instead of just collecting them..yeah!

The next Big Question is - which way to turn and where to start, which idea, project, inspiration...and this is really a hard one for me.
I would love to split into six different people and do everything in one time..but this won't happen unfortunately so as a first step I've decided to just simply follow projects from the books I own and see where this will lead me.

One of my favorite books about polymer clay jewelery is "Ancient Modern" by Ronna Sarvas Weltman, I listed it on the right. I've started to work on the first project listed in the book, and not everything is as easy as it looks.



I know from my experience that skillfulness and easiness come from proficiency and each step takes you closer but how many times you can redo 'simple' holes in a bead?:)


I made them twice and I know I will have to redo them tomorrow as they still look too clumsy and heavy and they are too big anyway...that is all for today, time to bed..:)

Sunday 15 May 2011

skill

"(...)Confidence is a trait that has to be earned honestly and refreshed constantly...
You have to work as hard to protect your skills as you did to develop them(...)
".

Another day, I have to say I feel quite overwhelmed by the amount of work which is in front of me. I am maybe too aware not of my current manual abilities but more where I want to reach and how far is that.

"(...) Skill gives you the wherewithal to execute whatever occurs to you. Without it, you are just a font of unfulfilled ideas. Skill is how you close the gap between what you can see in your's mind eye and what you can produce; the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be.(...)"
Thank you Twyla for the reminder!
I have to admit, I've lost my manual skills on which I worked really hard...I think it's even harder when you have to go back and start all over again but on the other hand the process itself this is the best part!

I have mentioned before about one of my projects I am working on, stylized Pierrot faces, but I have decided to put this off and first concentrate on developing more sophisticated skills with polymer. I don't want those faces to be simple, I don't mean simple is bad, definitely not in the way I see it. At the moment, my simple designs are not my sophisticated choice but my only option (I don't have the skills needed to make them as I want them to be, at least - not yet)...

These are two of the old ones I did six months ago...I gave them away as gifts to my dear friends:



These two are some kind of a start to deep in. With my confidence growing I will be adding more on the way to test new techniques and designs.

Tuesday 10 May 2011

starting....

It's been a busy time, as always with two kids around. Matylda started to climb...hard to get head around them now!
I've started to organize myself again, although it is difficult. I try to remember all those lovely parts from Twyla's Tharp book I have read recently, for instance:

"(...)Every day you don't practice you're one day further from being good."
The book (which I found the most suitable and the most inspiring) is full of phrases I would like to remember and practice in real..I even copied some of them to my special notebook to look through when I need an inspiration the most!

Anyway start is always hard,
"(...)whatever your medium, if you've been away from it for a few weeks, the first day are going to be clumsy and fruitless. But the things get easier as the rust falls away(...)"

I started with some exercises I had to do a while ago from another book I deeply admire: Polymer clay: Color Inspiration. From my educational experience I know that despite the fact those small exercises seem so easy or pointless they are in fact very important, useful, and in a long term - irreplaceable.
In this small one I had to do a collage from paper trimmings needed for a further work.



After about two or three ours of cutting and sticking this is what I ended up with:


It wasn't that easy as I thought. It took me a while to stick those cuts in a proper way, but as it is a warm-up, I was having fun:)

I've decided to finish some old stuff I've begun to work on when I discovered polymer:


Inspired by some polymer art faces pictures I found on the Internet and the wrapping from the push-molds I decided to have a go. I have a bunch of ideas in my mind already how to use them so this will be my other ongoing project.
Check out for the progress as I have quite a few to do :-)