Getting A Head
Western Tanager males are so gorgeous with their bright yellow bodies, black backs, and red heads. Turns out they are also unique in how they get those red heads. Most birds get the red color in their feathers from foods that contain red pigments. But these birds' red is from a pigment that only occurs in plants they don't eat themselves. Instead they get it indirectly by eating insects that eat the plants.
Learn more about these birds and hear their songs:
In my piece, I wanted to create the smooth transition between red and yellow that the real bird has. Fortunately, there is an easy way to do that with polymer clay using a pasta machine.
The technique is called a Skinner Blend after Judith Skinner who invented it in 1996, just 12 years before I first worked with polymer. It's so valuable, that it's one of the first things every polymer artist learns.
It does take a bit longer than this video. The exact number of passes varies depending on the difference in pigment strength between the two colors. In this case, the red is very strong compared to the yellow and it required about 40 passes through the machine to get the final smooth blend on both sides. In real time, it took about 6 minutes. Not bad to create a very controlled and smooth gradient.