Journeys in paper-cutting

I'll begin this post by adding some photo-documentation. A quick note, however, that most of these papercuts were quite spontaneous - a lot less planning went into them than the collages and etchings. I quite enjoyed the free-flowed change of pace.

Annotations to follow.....

Beginning with tiny trials:

I had tried making monoprinting stencils with Yupo. Because the Yupo I chose was so thick, it made it quite a pain to cut. I ended up giving up on the one below - it was far too time consuming and a strain on my hand and wrist.

The design below was easier to cut with Yupo - although I have yet to print it! These were early cutouts that I did back in March. I thought I could print multiples of them on gampi to layer between pages, but further down the track I thought it would be much more interesting to just make one-off paper-cuts.

I had also attempted to paint prior to cutting. I wasn't really satisfied with the results - I think it would have been more interesting to paint random patterns that were completely differnt to the papercut. I found following the lines rather tedious, and painting post papercutting was much easier.

Stay tuned for more papercutting stories...