Jan 25, 2016

Casual Skinner blend

As promised, I will post some of my older free tutorials here in next few days. Let's start with a casual Skinner blend.
This was really a fun experiment and as it usually goes, I made it completely accidentally.

I consider myself to be a fairly patient person. I have a ton of 'nerves of steel' specially when it comes to polymer clay: I am ready to do things over and over if not got right at first attempt, I calmly do precise cuts, assemble small parts and I am even able to sand my beads by hand for hours without much of a drama.
One of the things I don't have patience for is Skinner blend. I simply can't make myself to measure precisely and make a meaningful Skinner blend. All of the sudden I become annoyed and restless and want to speed the process. How crazy is that?

Tutorials seen online often include Skinner blends that are planned, thought through and measured. Obviously, a lot of time and energy are invested in making such beautiful blends. I sincerely admire all the artists that make Skinner blends in that manner.
I quit trying after my third. So when making them I just go with the flow trying to use all the clay I dedicated for the blend I am making and not bother myself with cutting and measuring. To be completely honest I actually enjoy being surprised with the result each time.

Photo shows my new casual Skinner blend experiment. I mixed some scrap clay lying around and made a colorful sheet. Just before putting it in the pasta machine a thought popped into my head: this will be booooooring! I hesitated for a minute and then started cutting pieces of clay out of the sheet and then mixed and matched them.
After running it through pasta machine for about 20 times this is what I got. It's so cool, isn't it?

How do you make your Skinner blends?

This tutorial is free but if its valuable to you and you want to support independent artist with some coffee or chocolate use paypal.me/NenaBArts to donate.
Thank you.



Smatram da sam prilično strpljiva osoba, pogotovo kada je reč o mom poslu. U stanju sam da satima strpljivo sedim i radim, da budem precizna bez drame kada je to potrebno, pa čak i da šmirglam bez protesta.

Jedna od stvari za koju nemam strpljenja je Skinner blend. Naprosto nemam nijedan preostali strpljivi živac koji bi mi pomogao da ga precizno merim i složim pre provlačenja kroz pasta mašinu. To svakako nije bila namera Judith Skinner, matematičarke koja je izumela ovaj način mešanja boja u radu s polimerskom glinom. Često na internetu viđam uputstva s unapred osmišljenim i precizno sastavljenim Skinner blendovima. Umetnicima koji ih prave divim se do ludila!

Odustala sam od toga nakon svog trećeg Skinner blenda. Pravim ih kako mi dodje i više ih prilagođavam količini materijala koju sam odredila za izradu Skinner blenda. Nekad ih sečem ovako, drugi put onako i da budem potpuno iskrena, uživam u tome da se svaki put iznenadim rezultatom.
Na slici vidite moj novi eksperiment s "opuštenim" Skinner blendom. Poslagala sam boje, umešane od raznorazne otpadne gline, preostale od prethodnih projekata, a onda mi se učinilo da će ispasti dosadan. Tada sam počela da isecam komade gline i menjam im mesta. Nakon provlačenja kroz pasta mašinu dobila sam rezultat koji vidite na slici.
Kako vi radite pravite Skinner blend?

6 comments:

  1. Very cool. Interesting that the red is so much bigger than the purple even though they appear to be about the same size.

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    Replies
    1. I love it because it is unpredictable. You never know what you will get. That is adventurous polymer clay. :)

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  2. Love it... Thanks for sharing

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