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STORIES IN PAPER

STORIES IN PAPER

Papercut illustrations by Ellie Chaney

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Blackbird in Blackberries

Blackbird in Blackberries

Handmade papercut, 2015. 40cm x 40cm

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I have new sea creature card sets! Find the link to my Etsy above and the first 10 people to buy them get a jellyfish free! Which is your favourite? #storiesinpaper #papercutter I completely forgot that I made a timelapse of me cutting my St John's Wort papercut. I wish it was this quick in real life! #papercut #papercutting #cutbyhand A recent commission of a family of sparrows. The lady I made this for has kindly offered to let me reproduce it as prints too. It was nice to surface from the deep sea subject matter for a few days and make some more birds 🐦 #storiesinpaper #papercut I've always loved the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins - one of the pioneers of photographic processes who made beautiful images of plants and seaweeds. I made this papercut of St John's Wort for my friend @nurture.mama who's a medical herbalist, and I think I'm going to make a collection of seaweeds now. They are obviously much less detailed then my other work, but I like the reference to botany and the simplicity of the white papercut on the blue board. I'd love to get out the chemicals and make them into real cyanotypes too 🙂 #storiesinpaper #papercut #cyanotype I know they aren't everyone's favourite, but I love Anglerfish. This is actually an image of not one, but two! The large fish is the female, and the male is the tiny shape at the bottom, who has fused himself onto the female so she can breed. Nature might not always be pretty but it's always clever 🙂 #storiesinpaper #papercutting #papercut I'm really happy that I've finished my Paper Nautilus cut out of paper this evening! For this picture it's held up against the light like a shadow puppet. Shadow puppets were actually my first papercuts. I'm really interested in puppetry as visual storytelling and I'd love to make some images as puppets for a show again one day 🙂 #storiesinpaper #papercut I'm nearly there with this small papercut of an Argonaut or Paper Nautilus - an amazing octopus that excretes a paper thin shell which it then traps air in to make it buoyant. It also uses it's shell to store eggs, and floats around in the ocean currents rather then crawling or swimming like other octopus types. Basically it's amazing, and is yet another example of how incredible life within our oceans is. Sadly I couldn't do it's wonderful shell justice in papercut form, it had so many beautiful, subtle colours in the light! The best I could include were my worn scalpel and battered fingers for scale 😏 #storiesinpaper #papercutting #papercut One of the most common questions I'm asked at art fairs is whether my work is lasercut. I am open to using lasercutting as a way of creating more affordable papercuts as editions, exploring making engraved wood blocks of my designs, and I reproduce my papercuts as digital prints. But so far all of my original images have been cut by hand. My most complex papercuts have taken me over 30 hours, and often people ask why I want to make hand cut work when it can be so easily created with technology. There are a few reasons for this: • I enjoy the challenge of seeing what I can achieve with my own hands. I find it hugely fulfilling when I pick up a completed papercut, it's always a proud moment and it's one I want to hold on to! • For me the act of papercutting is very meditative - it doesn't require the same type of thinking as drawing and I can only work on a computer or tablet for short periods of time before I get frustrated. • Looking at animal and translating it into a papercut image requires a lot of thought and careful looking I learn so much about the animals I am drawing while I do this, it's worth the time and the stiff fingers. • Lasercutting often leaves a burnt or blackened edge to the edges of the paper. It's not the quite same as turning over the paper to see the messy drawings on the back transform into a perfect image! So in conclusion, I'm always open to using new technologies if they make my work more accessible, but I really like to make things by hand too and will always keep this as a part of my working process 🙂 Drawing with a fineliner used to be my favourite medium a decade ago, but I'm quite out of practice these days. I've been working in my sketchbook recently which I hardly ever have time for, but always love! • • • #storiesinpaper #drawing #illustrator #illustration #art #artist #sketch #pen #penandink #naturalhistoryillustration #artistsoninstagram #sketchbook #wip #linedrawing #fineliner #0.05 #marinelife #marineanimal #sea #ocean #nautlius I went to a second hand book shop and found some lovely new (old) books today, full of beautiful illustrations of the natural world. I'm now happily leafing through them and drinking tea. Here are some of my favourites... I've just finished this Spiny Seahorse (Hippocampus Guttulatus). While I was researching them I learnt that there are 47 different species of seahorses and 14 of those were discovered in the last eight years. Another reason to look after our oceans that we know so little about! #storiesinpaper #papercut #illustration In the hope that I'll learn more about the shore life of the UK I've been making little studies if the things I've found on the beach. It's not my strongest area, but it's been fun to pick up a paintbrush again 🖌 (p.s the seaweed has moved since I last drew it, hence the lack of accuracy 🙄) • • • #storiesinpaper #art #artist #illustrator #illustration #naturalhistoryillustration #artistsoninstagram #sea #seaweed #beach #study #watercolour #penandink #pendrawing #linedrawing
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