Meet Sakura - revisiting an old friend and tackling infills

Meet Sakura

A business assosiate of Rob's (husband), a lovely lady who helped me with some HR advice last year, commissioned me to produce a papercut version of a digital illustration that I made for Heidi's nursery in 2013.

The design never considered the closed paths that papercutting requires so there was a wee bit of adjustment but overall I am very happy with the cut. In fact it's my new favourite. I was always fond of the illustration but it was a little crude, I am not master of Illustrator and my formal graphic design training was minimal.

I cut the design from a piece of 160gsm smooth white card, as a negative cut, removing all sections of detail rather than cutting away the negative space. The blossoms were infilled with pink 120gsm paper and rather than struggling with my cocktail stick and wanderlustful superglue, I secured the infills with slivers of masking tape. (thank you to Paper Panda and By Charlie's Hand for that revelation! and seriously join the Papercutting groups on facebook, an education and social life rolled into one!)

I then superglued my firm favourite, kraft card, to the back of the piece, dotting superglue over the masking tape slivers too for extra security.

Client wants to piece mounted so her friend can chose her own frame.

Here are the pictures of the original print, through to completed conversion into cut. Links to papercutting groups at the bottom.

Sakura Digital Illustration available as print only £4

Negative cut Sakura - cherry blossom

Infills, secured with masking tape 

Detail of negative cuts

Papercutting Groups on Facebooks: Advice, support, inspiration, chats, hints and tips.

Papercutting Hideaway,

Papercutting and Paper Craft, Trainee - Expert,

We Love Papercutting

Papercutting

So I have blogged about a few papercuts before, part of my soft spot for them comes from the books I read as a child, illustrated with silhouettes by Jan Pienkowski and shadow puppet theatre films that seemed to be a bit of a thing in the 80s. That and the obsessive cutting of snowflakes and chains of paper girls and boys holding hands.

I have been sketching a lot more recently and was practicing my high contrast black and white shadow drawing, when I realised, these might look rather good as papercuts. Well as it transpires there are a lot of bloody brilliant artists doing this already, not that it will stop me, and I came across even more wonderful artists, I'd like to share some of these here.

Rob Ryan - If found Rob's work a few years ago, a solar plate friend of mine, Sarah, popped into Atelier Rose and Gray, when they had a gallery in my local town Ramsbottom. In the window was this huge red and white print. I had seen it for a couple of weeks each time I sat at the traffic lights. Big, bold, sentimental and in my favourite colour (if I can't have black).  Sarah decided she would have it as an engagement gift. Money well spent, it looks amazing above her sideboard. I was introduced to the work of Rob.

This Is For You - Rob Ryan

Emily Hogarth - I love Emily. Not in the least because she is a bloody brilliant artists, but she has a range of equally bloody brilliant books about papercutting. Buy them, buy them all. She produces some very clever, understated, landscapes, I envy such ability to convey a view with such simplicity. She also makes very cute animal cuts and commerirative pieces too.

Emily Hogarth

Paper Panda - aka Louise Firchau. Possibly the neatest cutter I have seen so far, the tiniest, weeniest cuts.  Actually, "like' her on facebook, she is lovely, warm, honest and engaging and you get a great insight to her who process from sketch to frame. She does a very cute cartoon style line, text based pieces and story books. My favourites are the Alice in Wonderland.

Drink Me - Eat Me - Paper Panda

I'll be sharing more along the way but can in the meantime, point you to, Suzy Taylor, Hina Aoyama, Nahoko Kojima, Heather Moore, Nicky McClure. Really there are hundreds more but I promised myself I'd clock off at 21:30, there is a Toblerone with my name on it... if I were called Toblerone.