Thursday 7th August - making things - illustrations

I've kept the challenge going for 7 days now;

There is another quilted mat, and a square for the knitted blanket project for days 5 and 6.

So, here's the list
day 1 and 2 piano kit, crochet circle
3 free motion quilt sample
4 quilted mat
5 knitted square
6 another mat

Today's effort is a paper cut of a bird. I took the design from a book, and used my small, cheap embroidery scissors as I don't have a suitable scalpel.

One of the reasons for the challenge is to try out different techniques and ideas. I love paper cut designs, but have never done one before. I suspect that using a scalpel would be much easier - quite a few of the thin paper bridges between the cut areas are more fragile that I would like due to the clumsiness of even these tiny scissors.

I think it is the uncompromising contrast between the paper and the background that appeals to me. It is similar to the way I've always liked Arthur Ransome's illustrations for his "Swallows and Amazons" books,

and Tolkien's drawings for "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings".



The main reason I bought Gombrich's "A Little History of the World" was for the woodcut illustrations.

Woodcuts have that same cleverness in the way simple black and white space is manipulated to create a complex image. Is suppose the musical equivalents would be Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and maybe the pentatonic scale.