Raise your hand if you can spot four faces here!
This is a papercut that didn´t turn out quite as expected. At first, I thought it was going to travel directly from my cutting board to the trash bin, but then I accidentaly held it and it sort of decomposed and became a “mobile”. Love this kind of surprises!
More photos of the process of making this book here.
Here´s a papercut illustration I´m working on. I love papercutting more and more as a medium!
After cutting this illustration the other day I realized that I have a really bad posture. I´m so concentrated on cutting the lines right that I simply forget anything around me, or about me, actually, and that includes how my back is positioned. At the end of the two hour session I realized there was something weird about my muscles and the next day I could hardly move.
I´ve been stretching my back periodically during the day, as well as wearing an extra layer of insulation for warmth; Paulo massaged my back with this weird smelling medicated cream and I can slowly move more and more without grinning. But simple things like sneezing remind me that I´m not fully recovered.
I think that after this warning sign I definitely have to watch my posture (I say as I straight my back).
Sometimes it is frustrating not being able to show the projects I´ve been working on because, well, they´re still projects and they´re still secret. This one, though, I can show. It´s an invitation I made for my youngest niece´s baptism next September. And I´ll attend it!
Her name is Clara, which reminded me of light, which I made the starting point for the papercuts. I worked them on double sided origami paper. Each side has a different, contrasting colour, and this is a feature I love because it brings double results with one cut only. The best part, though, is to frame the originals in one of those see-through (or glass against glass) frames, because just by fliping sides you can get a new papercut.
The whole “making of” sequence is here. Enjoy!
É amanhã o exame de alemão. Como não se me ocorre nada de interessante para contar aqui no “Entre…”, publico uma fotografia de um trabalhinho fofo que fiz na sexta-feira passada para uma pessoinha ainda mais fofa, a minha sobrinha C2. Estou danada para poder apreciar com o tacto o volume bochechal, bem como para contar pessoalmente as bolinhas que são os deditos dos pés.
Com a mana C1 tenho falado frequentemente por skype e ouço coisas deliciosas como “Bi, não precisas de ter saudades minhas, basta ligares-me por skype!” (será que já contei isto aqui? muitas vezes?), o que me apazigua as saudades, mas da C2 vejo os sorrisos e ouço os guinchinhos de satisfação (ou o berreiro de fome) que vai dando.
Hmmm, dúvida metódica: será que é por ter o cérebro torrado, ou melhor torriert, que estou a dizer todas estas coisas cheias de baba de tia?
Talvez seja melhor mandá-los passear aqui, onde estão as fotografias de todo o processo do dito trabalhinho.
These past few days have been busy sketching and developing and studies with cut out illustrations. Doing these studies has been a major part of the satisfaction a project gives me and I feel that it is being very helpful on my search to finding a “voice”, or a “style” for these characters. I´ve been repeating and repeating studies, trying different combinations of “full” areas (not cut out) and “empty” ones and learning a lot from this process. It´s amazing how much the relationship between shape and background can vary with tiny little changes in what gets subtracted from the paper and what doesn´t.
Really, I´m having a grand time working on this, can you tell?
More pictures of this process here.
This is an editorial piece made for the call for entries “Sou Ilustrador”. Unpublished. The only information given was a title for a potential newspaper article, about Iran´s nuclear reinforcement and how it affects its relationship with the USA. I decided to go with a papercut, a technique that I love more and more as time goes by. I love how its synthetic language forces me to convey the message in very symbolic details. Unfortunately, my work wasn´t chosen, but still I´m really happy with the result.
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Papercut feito para o concurso “Sou Ilustrador”, de carácter editorial. Para o concurso, apenas foi disponibilizada uma frase, o potencial título de um artigo dessa publicação: “Irão reforça arsenal nuclear e complica relações diplomáticas com Estados Unidos”.
Apesar do meu trabalho não ter sido escolhido, fiquei muito satisfeita com esta ilustração.
I´ve been working on a series of “thank you” cards for my shop, all done with cut paper illustrations. I´m loving this tecnhique more and more every single time I do it! It´s still a bit hard on my shoulders and neck but the results are so satisfying that I want to keep cutting more and more paper.
More photos here (more will be added to this set as I upload them).
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Nos intervalos do “outro” trabalho que tenho estado a fazer (de design gráfico, para clientes), estive a fazer uma série de ilustrações em papel cortado para um novo conjunto de postais para colocar brevemente à venda na minha loja. Cada vez estou a gostar mais de usar a técnica do recorte em papel para ilustrações: por um lado, é o facto de ser uma linguagem minimalista, com apenas duas cores (a do fundo e a do papel); por outro, o facto de poder ter uma expressão de traço bastante rudimentar, por ser cortado com x-acto. Apesar das dores nos ombros e no pescoço com que fico quando faço uma nova ilustração, cada dia estou mais feliz com esta técnica!
Mais fotografias deste conjunto de cartões aqui.
I´m camera-less. My very faithful, always with me digital camera decided to become an impressionist yesterday, after several long years of hard work. I´m sad because it was a present, I´m sad because I was used to it and loved working with it, and mostly sad because apparently it is a defect that Sony is aware of – and still, it appeared after the warranty expired. Now I don´t want to go into the “big corporation” doesn´t care argument here, as apparently Sony US is repairing cameras for free – if you´re in the US. Here in Argentina I was told a huge, bold no and that I would receive a quotation for the repair.
Anyway, this is one of the pictures my camera took while living its impressionist stage:
So that´s why I´m now relying on my laptop´s camera, which of course isn´t neither the most portable camera in the world nor the best quality ever. But still I´m thankful it exists because that way I can show you the papercut I worked on today. I hope to convert it into a card later this week and add it to my shop as soon as possible (but will need a decent camera to photograph the cards, right?).
Ontem, apesar de ter a visão totalmente descompensada por ter um olho a ver bem e o outro mal, pus-me a fazer uma ilustração em papel cortado. Documentei todo o processo e a respectiva série de fotografias está To check it out, click aqui. Espero que gostem!
A história do olho: fui fazer a correcção laser da miopia. O médico decidiu fazer um olho de cada vez e, apesar de ter começado pelo meu olho pior, a verdade é que me sinto a navegar num mar de nevoeiro quando tenho os dois olhos abertos ao mesmo tempo. Enfim, é uma semana em versão “one-eyed-Billy” (como nos Goonies) e na próxima segunda já tudo deverá estar bem. Mas olhem que é uma emoção ver anulados, em cinco minutos, mais de vinte anos de óculos, de distâncias nebulosas, de vistas cansadas. Viva o raio laser! Tenho ali os óculos pousados na mesa de cabeceira sem saber o que lhes fazer…
Papercut+digital type for Illustration Friday.