Sunday, July 1, 2012

Tropical Inspiration

Remember the scene from "The Wizard of Oz" where Dorothy says to the Wizard, "Oh, you're a really bad man"? And he replies, "No, I'm a very good man, but a very bad wizard".

Well, (on most days) I think that I'm a decent polymer artist, but would have to admit that I'm not such a hot blogger (that is, with regards to consistency!) With a two month lapse between posts, you might think that I've been slacking off in the polymer department. Not so. True, there have been other things going on that have been time-consuming, but I've actually managed to be productive in the last couple of months.

One of the "time-consuming" activities was a road trip to Florida in May to visit family. I came home with my brain replaying the colors of the Keys. This isn't a color palette that I normally embrace. Bits and pieces of it, yes, but I typically don't jump head-first into a scheme combining the sea shades of turquoise, the floral blasts of magenta and tangerine and the almost fluorescent green backdrop everywhere.

But, upon getting back into my studio, I just couldn't resist interpreting what I'd seen. And, of course, I had to throw in a little bit of classy black and depth-extending translucent. I made a mokume gane block, plus some of my favorite "snakeskin" texture. I layered slices of both techniques (along with their always exciting and unpredictable trimmings) with solid colors and translucent to make a sheet of vibrant pattern from which to cut bead covers.


 And here are some of the sanded/buffed components, some already on their way to becoming finished pieces:


I was going to end by commenting that it's fun to occasionally step out of your comfort zone, but I think that I'm now actually comfortable with this palette ;)