People ask me “How do you get them to look so real?”
My reply...
...a few days of steady work and concentration. And some practice.
"I use a popular and now fairly common polymer clay method to make images. My first draft is always pencil and paper. It is this working sketch that maps the process and so becomes a guide for building an image from the raw polymer clay to the finished cane where the motif is visible in the cross-section.
The term 'cane' along with the technique, is borrowed from similar but much older processes, The manufacture boiled sweets and also the world famous Murano glass. Both depend on the construction of canes with a decorative cross-section.
THE POLYMER CLAY CANE METHOD
I begin blending clay (2 or 3 kilos) into the various colours I need and start rolling into long thin wedges, long thin strips and long thin logs - the building blocks for making my image in cross-section of the clay cane.
It takes a few days of steady work and concentration to get a tomato, orange or the face of a teddy bear into a lump of clay. It is all very methodical.
The final phase - cutting a lot of slices - is easy and quite relaxing."
Illustration and graphics are still Jane's main focus and practice. But in '91 she came across polymer clay and began to make earrings for fun.
Tiny, colourful, playful and realistic - made with diligence and precision.
The fun of making it happen with a level of detail that does not seem possible! Jane's work in polymer clay has won her two prizes; Formland, Denmark and The British Crafts Trade Fair in Harrogate.
HamiltonByHand is based on Bornholm in Denmark from where Jane finds her primary visual inspiration.
