I decided it was finally time to carve out a little corner of Web to display my cut-paper work for more than my family and Facebook friends – especially since I would like to start selling some pieces. So, here is catch-up of what I’ve been up to over the past two years:
When my niece Madelynn was born in February 2010, I decided to forgo the standard cute baby outfit or stuffed animal, instead making something a bit more personal. I’d been toying with the idea of layered paper for a while and this seemed the perfect situation to use the technique. The resulting piece, based on the Dr. Seuss classic Horton Hatches the Egg, showed her full name and birth date floating on clouds above the Jungle Nool where a pair of Horton-styled elephants stared proudly at a just-hatched, pink elephant-bird. Unfortunately, I either neglected to take any pictures since I was trying to get it in the mail or the pictures are hiding in some sub-subfolder on my hard drive.
In late November in 2010, my cousin Jenn and her husband Chris finally decided to take life’s big plunge and get married. Being an eclectic couple, they decided on an outdoor, twilight ceremony at the Pagoda in Reading, PA. This seemed another good opportunity to stretch my creative muscles and push my paper skills farther.
After searching the web, I managed to find this postcard of the Pagoda from 1915 and thought it would be the perfect basis for a piece:
You’ll notice I changed the season to Fall in the final piece to reflect their date choice.
Art projects and such fell by the wayside during the busy 2010 holiday season (especially since I have two small children), and I really didn’t get a chance to get back to work until my mom’s birthday in March 2011. My mom is a HUGE Wizard of Oz fan, particularly the Wicked Witch of the West. She saw Wicked on Broadway and loved it so much, she took me, my wife and my older daughter to see it a second time. The original Playbill art is perfect for a cut-paper illustration:
Which made my choice pretty much a no-brainer.
Wicked: Paper and art marker, Art size: 11x14, Matted/Framed: 16x20
My cut-paper version is very close to the original design with only some slight modifications:
- Using a shinny black/charcoal paper for Elphaba’s hat band and hair so it would stand out a bit from the matte black of the dress and hat.
- Separating the Elphaba’s hair into snake-like locks which I then layered and wove for a more interesting texture.
- Adding highlights to Glinda’s hair
To achieve an incised dimensional look, I reverse-cut the WICKED logo lettering from Elphaba’s dress and then backed it with a textured white paper.
Although it is difficult to see in the above photo, the Flying Monkeys are actually made from three pieces (two wings and a body) of gray paper which I then detailed with a darker gray marker.
So this takes us through March of 2011. Please tune in next time for my tribute to Pixar’s Ratatouille.
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