Its that time of year again. The strains of Pomp and Circumstance fill the air as commencement ceremonies all over the country open with the faculty filing into the field, or gymnasium, or stadium, or convention center. Tradition calls for the faculty and students to be dressed in academic regalia. Academic regalia, or academicals, refer to […]

Last month I spent a week in beautiful Victoria, B.C. teaching a Smashing Color retreat with a small group of friends from the Vancouver Island Polymer Clay Artists Guild. It was a new experience for me in many ways. First – I was able to walk around a little bit of the Victoria Harbor the […]

Last week Sage Bray, the editor of The Polymer Arts magazine, and I had a guest post on Polymer Clay Daily about measuring thicknesses on pasta machines. We asked the polymer community to follow measuring instructions and fill out a short survey.  We’ve heard from artists all over the world and so far we’ve collected more […]

Portland Center Stage just finished a run of the play “RED” about Mark Rothko. Originally staged in London, the play opened on Broadway two years ago and won the 2010 Tony for Best Play. This two-person play by John Logan is set in Rothko’s studio in the late 1950’s.  He is working on paintings for the […]

Often  zooming in on an image can inspire new design and color combination ideas. Today I’m zooming in on chairs. These are three very different details from chairs made by artists for the Chair Affair fundraiser – the annual auction for the Portland Community Warehouse. Many Portland artists contribute pieces to the auction. Some make the […]

Target aired a new commercial on the Grammies. It features the song ‘Alouette, Gentile Alouette’ by The Delta Rhythm Boys. If you haven’t seen this fun spin on color, check it out on YouTube. Happy Valentines Day! May all your days be filled with color!

Since I alway start with the #1 setting, this version of the chart has the thick settings at the top. PDF Version: Pasta Machine Standards 4.0

The Racine Art Museum’s Terra Nova: Polymer Art at the Crossroads closed on Sunday. The first major museum exhibit of polymer art in the country, this show could never have happened without the vision and intrepid determination of polymer artist and advocate Elise Winters. I first heard Elise’s dream for a museum show as we […]

This fun color matching game starts out easy- just move the open circle bullseye around the outside of the wheel until the two colors of the inside circle match. Then it gets a little more difficult – match the saturations, then match the complementary colored pieces of pie. Match analogous and triadic color schemes.  It ends […]

The Mingei International Museum in San Diego is currently showing their collection of polymer beads and beaded jewelry in New Jewelry in a New Medium: The Art of Polymer Clay.   I visited the Mingei a few years ago when my friend Doshi had a one woman show of her fiber art. Its a beautiful […]

Putting colors in order according to value can be tough. Here are the twelve colors from the post about value last month. I put them in the order I thought they should go and scanned the results in grayscale. They fall into three value ranges – dark, medium, and light but, as you can see, […]

“I’d like to get all the colors in the world into one painting.”    Willem de Kooning I grew up surrounded by paintings done by mom and dad. One of my favorites is a large canvas that still hangs over the mantle in the living room. It was painted by my dad in the late […]