Strong Love

Strong Love
This was a fun illustration job. I made a cut paper strongman for Marmite, and it appears in this month's circus-themed Obrigado magazine.

Oh, and next time you're at a Vida e Caffe, pick up a copy to check out Michael Taylor's fab illustrations.

A cut tut

A cut tut

I arrived at my studio on Saturday morning, wanting to make something large and filled with different kinds of leaves and stems. In the back of my mind was this sketch by Arounna, and this ink drawing by Etsy seller, Karen Gathany.

Step 1

After looking at lots of flowers and plants in my books and magazines, I drew a 45 x 45cm composition of botanical specimens onto some thin white paper, and stuck it to black paper with a couple of pieces of sticky tape.

Then I started to cut.

I use steeply-pointed NT cutter blades in a rather wonky craft knife. I really should get a proper NT cutter because it's much more stable.

Step 2 Now it's just about putting on some music and putting in the hours. I slice through both layers of paper, cutting on either side of the lines I've drawn, removing the white paper so I can see where I've cut. I tend to make lots of decisions and changes as I go.

Step 3

Change the CD again, shake out your fingers, and keep on cutting...

Step 4

I like this part - I slough off the white paper guide, which remains largely intact, but very frail.

Step 5

This part takes the longest, and I have to be so careful. Most of my cuts have not been close enough to a neighbouring cut, so now I carefully make release cuts to remove the negative spaces. The more negative space I remove, the more delicate everything becomes.

Step 6

Finally! I finished without tearing anything or slicing anything off mistakenly.

Step 7

Now I hang out the nearly-finished cutout on my line so I can look at it and decide what's next. Mostly, I'm happy with this cutout, but some areas seem a little congested and could do with some pruning, which I'll get onto today.

More cutting

More cutting
I think I'll turn the long ones into screenprints on paper. The other one was made to go on a pillowcase, I think. Lots to do!

Many thanks

Thanks, all

2008 has had a great start!, with lots of very exciting interest in my work from all over the planet. I hope to tell you lots more about this soon.

Also, I've had so many lovely mentions on other blogs this year, and just want say a big Skinny thanks to Zee Homebug and to bowie style of Print & Pattern for letting everyone know about my new flickr page , to Jen of Painted Fish Studio for the beautiful photo of the teatowel she bought, and also to Victoria at sfgirlbybay for the multipronged shout-out she gave me yesterday.

And thanks for all the comments from everyone too. You guys are the best!

Another way 2008 has started well is that I've had rare expanses of time in which to do things just because I wanna! On one of these glorious afternoons, I cut the paper flowers at the top of the post. Here's hoping for lots more days like this in 2008!

Happy weekend!

More animals

In more detail

Thanks for all the positive comments on my horoscope animals! They've spurred me to finally my Flickr page organised. So now I've got a cut paper/vinyl set where I've uploaded all the photos for you to see, along with a few others.

Paper tigers etc...

Paper tigers, dragons, etc...

Vida e Caffe coffee shops have an free instore magazine called Obrigado, and for their New Year's issue, I was commissioned to do paper cutouts for all the Chinese Horoscope animals. What a cool job!

A super-quick deadline meant I didn't have time to take my own pics of the final work, so I only have the official white on white versions, which are lovely, but quite hard to see. Here's how it turned out in print. I'm very pleased with the result.

By the way, in case you're wondering about the scale, the little people in the pics are not life size! Each animal is only about 10 - 15cm high.