Вопросы и Ответы на русском Nr. 5 от Утки Мандаринки. КАК НАЙТИ ДРУЗЕЙ?

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Q&A; by Mandarin Duck. Mixing clays and buying supplies.

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Thoughts and Doubts

Hello everyone and Happy New Year!

I know, I know it's the 6th of January, but I usually still say happy new year to everyone I see up until the 10th of January. So there we are. 2016!

The first week of January had passed and I felt very creative and made some paintings, practiced my calligraphy and meditated on some deep feelings and thoughts that were starting to boil inside my heart. 

Some of you, who are following me for quite some time or even new followers and people interested in my art, might think that I never struggle with my creativity. You guys are saying that I can't stop amazing you and each of my next work is better than the previous one... This is all very pleasant to my ears but in reality I am absolutely not feeling this. In anything, I am feeling like I am degrading, instead of progressing. This kind of sensations can have a couple of reasons and perhaps I have figured out a few and am ready to tell you about them. 

First of all, of course it doesn't help if you see some other people's art. It can inspire you a lot and it can also suck you in and give you obsessions and put you so much off track. Especially if you haven't yet strictly figured out what your track is.. I don't think that many artist do know where exactly they are heading... Or sometimes you marvel at somebody else's creations so much, that you waste all your creative powers and powers in general from just doing that. Some of the days I feel like a mother who is 10 months pregnant and still, nothing is coming out! I can have an idea in my head and perhaps even a sketch drawn somewhere, but I just can't start.

I have noticed that starting a project is actually the hardest part. Once you are in it, it's an ongoing process and you just add up some more and more until it's finished. If you are very inspired or had too much chocolate, then perhaps you can spend the night adding that little something or nailing through the whole project with a speed of light. But starting it, God, this is so hard for me. 

I remember once i needed to make a raven journal and I would walk around my room, clean it, go for walks, come back to my studio, move things around and I actually ended up painting the walls in my room ( this was during 2 days time and it felt crazy intense).. and in all this painting decorative mess, with paint jugs and brushes still standing on my table ... you know what I did? I pulled out my black clay and created a great Raven Samurai journal in the middle of the night in 3 hours. 3 hours!!!

 I don't quite know when exactly the "Working Energy Gates" do open and the flow of energy, inspiration and crazy ideas start to flow out of them, but it seems like that my gates are rather spontaneous and they don't get a clue what "business", "time" or "being organised" means. 

Some days I can just look at photos and pictures online and offline, go through other people's work, catalogues, books, movies, and I create nothing for days. Then Boom! and I am sitting and claying out of the blue or I have this vision before sleep in all the colour and motion of beautiful things and next morning I wake up at 5am from an urge to work and create. 

Seasonal depressions don't help either and even if my ones are more of an artistic mood swings, they still kick you out of your track for good. I am not mentally ill, I am just very sensitive to weather changes and to nature life cycles. And so I struggle. 

For the past couple of weeks I did put all of my clay work away as soon as I was finished with my urgent orders. I didn't feel like claying.. I was writing calligraphy and painting. I couldn't understand why, but I felt like my art had reached it's peak and not in a good sense. I felt like there is a block, but not in ideas, but in my skills, the way I do things and tools and materials I use, shapes I make, dimensions I work with. All the works I was doing were nice, but nothing like the great ideas in my head. And so I had even spoken to Ash about this, saying that I don't know what is going on, but it feels like I am shedding some skin and something is changing inside me, something is trying to grow out of me, something new but it haven't gone through the surface yet, so I don't know what it is. We discussed that I should not stop claying, that just painting might not bring me what I want from life and so on... To be honest I went away from this conversation even more dissatisfied than I was when it started... but then I went to my studio and put some music on (Solar Fields).. This music always keeps me energetic and gives me the sense of concentration and in good working state. 

I went googling for inspirations after inspirations, collecting ideas, visions, characters and after I did come up with a sketch of a journal I am willing to make. Yesterday I was positive this is going to be an A4 size journal. But now I am in doubt if I want this journal to be large A4 piece or a super detailed A5. I want the actual journal to be covered in leather, with book corners and all of the details that will make this book look very professionally made. Later on when this project is finally done, I will show you and will mention all the inspirations I had, as this picture contains bits and bobs from a few photographs and digital paintings of amazing artists and so I would love them to be credited for that properly. 

So here ladies and gentleman in my latest sketch of something I am willing to make. 

"Elements Entwined" Journal

Hello everyone and welcome!

Let me present you my my "Elements Entwined" journal which I particularly enjoyed making as I had discovered some new techniques while making it. 

Again, during Christmas period I do receive quite a lot of Christmas orders and so this was is not an exception. I was quite pleased that I have received quite a few local UK based orders. It's good to be appreciated by people from your own continent as usually it's American people and people from Australia that did order a lot before from me. So I am glad that UK customers did join them this year. 

So the mission for this project was to create some fire and water Yin Yang inspired artwork. That was all I knew. Luckily my customer didn't order it to be a Yin Yang shape in particular and so I had some space for inspiration. 

I have used couple of  stock images from google as my main inspiration and while there is nothing special in these pictures, they really helped me to understand what exactly I wanted to show on the journal. I wanted the water and the fire to be more than just that. I wanted them to look decorative. 

So  everything started with black clay base and white clay for the elements. I knew that this project will require quite a strong and powerful colour effect and I wasn't sure I will be able to achieve it by using colourful clay. I admit I am not as strong in using all sorts of polymer clay effects and I prefer to use clay for sculpting and then paint it over. I have noticed that my style right now is undergoing some changes where I am discovering some new techniques, tools, materials, ways of painting with inks and acrylics and even liquid polymer clay.  So there it was, just a black and white object, but I did make sure that I made all the necessary volumes and textures on it before colouring. 

The first step for me is always sort of a trial. I use inks and I do use lighter, sort of more transparent colours, just to set the colours in, to understand how the design will look and so on. When I like what I made, then I add up some more shadows, deeper and brighter colours and then I bake my artwork. 

As you can see, I am using a transparent film as a palette for my inks. this way I can clearly see the colour and the inks don't get absorbed into paper. You can also use a white plate I guess but make sure you won't eat from it again. 

So for this composition I used Piñata Inks in red and yellow (can't remember if I mixed orange or used Piñata orange as well).. And for the blues I used blue ink from Piñata and a little bit of Adirondack ink in Mermaid colour. I was quite pleased with the result and I knew I will be enchanting these colours later after the first bake. 

For the water - wave effect I have used this photo to get inspired from colours and to see how to create the foam.  Waves do fascinate me a lot and by looking at them you can see so much detail, lovely constellations of foam, strands of foam, perfect turquoise teal ocean wave colour burst and lovely little shimmery droplets on the very tops of the waves. PERFECTION!Love waves! 

After the baking was done I added up extra tones, made sure that the colors are strong, vivid and consistent ( I used Reeves, Liquitex acrylic 

paints for that). The little ribbons and swirls of fire got covered with 18K Gold Leaf  pen from Krylon. I love this pen. It's quite pricey but it's perfect as it uses real gold powder and it shines so much more than gold acrylic paint I have. 

For the silver-white wave foam I have used same marker but in Silver tone. I have also added up some crushed pearls on the bumpy parts of the water foam. And the actual foam was made from Pardo Translucent clay. First I made it from a lot of coral look-a-like clay pieces and then I texturised it with a very fine ball tool to create more bubbles. 

After all the colours were set, I decided to experiment and I used liquid clay (brushed it over the fire and water areas). Baked again, of course. It gave it this interesting depth and some nice satin shine. I have also implemented some crushed crystals into it while the clay was still liquid and baked it all together. Unfortunately crushed crystals ended up being very sharp and so I had to rip some of them off and cover the others with more varnish and liquid clay as safety comes first! I didn't want my client to cut his fingers! 

And so by the end of this project I came up with this journal which I was quite pleased with as I haven't yet done anything from clay that represented realistically looking fire and water and even if fire does only look real in the photos or real life, I knew that my fire will be fore of a decorative one and I was happy with the result.  ENJOY!

Thank you so much for reading till the end, 

Namaste ॐ

Samurai Journal

Hello everyone!

Today I would like to show you a journal I made as a custom order for a client that was local and fun to work with. My client had an idea that he wants to have a journal made for his girlfriend for Christmas. He said she loves Samurai art and Giraffes. He was willing on having both elements put into one work, but I kept insisting that he has to choose one as giraffes and  Samurai can't go together neither physically, not geographically or ethically. It just doesn't go! Period :)

So we stopped at Samurai and his preference was more of a classy side of Japanese art. We stoped at this picture gracefully painted by JungShan Ink and together we decided to work on a square journal. Just as well I had one and I really wanted to use it for some time. 

I didn't quite know where this journey will end and at this moment of time I was using my new claying/painting technique where first I engrave a little relief on raw white clay to show some volumes and then paint it all over. First I really wanted to keep it very simple, almost calligraphy style, but when I used my black ink, it turned purple when diluted  and so the artwork gained some colour. I also wanted the artwork look like it's painted on ancient yellowed down paper and that worked. 

In general, I like painting with inks on my clay artworks before I cover them in acrylics. It might seem like a waste of time as I cover the majority of ink with acrylic paints anyway, but  it helps me out a lot as when the background is covered in colour, it's easier to paint on top of it with acrylics later and the white background doesn't shine through the multiple layers of paint. So all in all my Japanese samurai clay tile looked like this after it was first baked. I knew it's wasn't finished, but sometimes my artworks do not look completely right up until the very last moment when I put the very last finishing touches. So bare with me on this artwork and see the whole process. I started painting with acrylics as soon as it was baked and from there an idea of the sunset had appeared. Sometimes the whole colour scheme can arise from just a couple of correct brush strokes with the right colour. Same happened here. I decided that I was the Samurai and the tree to be backlit and I decided that the sun needs to be very warm yellow to achieve that kind of look. 

I've been also looking at quite a few mountain scenes which were painted in watercolour technique to understand how it would look like. 

So you can see from the picture bellow that the result and the whole colour idea kinda remained similar to original watercolour effect I made with inks prior baking, but of course it has gained more depth, shadows, atmosphere and feel of realism. Although this hardly can be called a good painting, I am still very happy with the result as all in all across two covers and a spine, it looks like a nice composition and a story about a dedicated Samurai who rises before the sunrise to practice his skills, to meditate in a dance with his sword and to greet the sun respectfully. 

Thank you very much for reading, 

Namaste ॐ