Making drawings of planned paper-cuts is all well and good, but it’s only once the cutting begins that you really get to grips with the challenges. Figuring out how to make everything hold together by ensuring ‘connection’ points is a learning curve, especially when the scalpel slices a little too far and your long-laboured-over sheet of filigree falls apart. (I should probably just tape up the mistakes, but the obsessive/purist in me takes the upper hand, and I always start over again.) However, I’m getting more proficient as the project advances, and it has to be said that my love of ‘negative space’ is a strength when dealing with these images made only of black, connected shapes, against a white ground.
Peter Lloyd is a force of nature, and his scalpel is flying over the cutting board.
Here is an album of the finished component cuts to date, both Peter Lloyd’s and mine. (We haven’t started ‘stitching’ them together yet.) Interesting how our styles have become unified by the paper-cutting technique.
Peter Lloyd writes of his image above:
‘It’s a hairy beast, representing our animalistic tendencies. It could also be on fire, representing passion and the ill advised hot headedness that can sometimes end in a regretful text or photo. Lots of duality going on- the beast is a conjoined twin, male and female. It’s a lovely/nasty issue, hence the thorns of the beautiful rose. The beast holds a mirror up to the sext and all that is reflected is bad luck and break up; the 13, the broken circle (or possibly a wedding ring?) and at the base of the handle is a skull, contained in the shape of a house- one slip could destroy the happy home! The edge of the mirror has a black and white chequered pattern, for who hasn’t lived a life without some sort of chequered past? We all dip through our moments of black and white…’
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Peter Lloyd at work, sharing a table at Southampton Solent School of Art, Design and Fashion with the wonderful Charles Shearer, who’s busy making a block for a print.
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From Peter Lloyd’s notebook:
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Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 
This is such an unbelievably fabulous project!! SWOON!
did I miss where you explain what kind of paper you’re using? I can’t believe these fantastic details!!
Just plain old black paper from the shelves of the local art shop, Zoe. The only trick is to use super-sharp scalpels, and I’m changing blades all the time, so that the blades cut and don’t tear. And I work on a large scale, and in a good light.
It’s been a lark, though truth to tell, I think I’m only just getting into the zone with it. You have to think paper cut, and not drawing. To begin with I was definitely overthinking everything, but now I feel relaxed and the work is flowing.
I LOVED the card you and G sent, and I long to see the puppet theatre. Will you show me? Please!
oh! we’re so pleased that you liked it 😀
of course, i will try to photo the stage and send it to you asap 🙂
thanks 🙂
(ps i was certain this must be specially non-tearing paper…you must have very steady hands!!)
Well, my dear, YOU didn’t see the fuck-up I made of the technique when I got all gung-ho at the beginning, but thought I could go commando… i.e. do it without my spectacles!!!!! Ha ha. It looked like black paper butchery.
I LONG to see the puppet theatre!!!!! Are you having fun playing with it?