Tonight’s video is about the making of rice paper in Jingxian County of east China’s Anhui Province, in particular the making of a single sheet 3.6 meters wide and 11 meters long.
You can read more text about the video on its Youtube page here. If you would like to see a more detailed explanation of some of the 108 steps in making this type of paper, you could spend 8 minutes and 51 seconds of your weekend watching this video from UNESCO on the making of Xuan paper.
This week’s mini book —another one-page book— requires a little bit of preamble.
I first met Dennis Anderson at a Tai Chi class in 1990: I had taken up Tai Chi after being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and Dennis joined the class after he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Continue reading
This will be the last paper cutting video for a while. (No, really!)
My Paper Mind is an extremely short stop motion animation by Javan Ivey. It’s a sort of animated tunnel book or 3D flip book.
Ivey describes the work in his own words on his Vimeo page.
“My Paper Mind” is an experimental animation exploring the “Stratastencil” technique that I’ve devised. Inspired by the Stratacut technique, Stratastencil is an additive process. Stratacut removes material to reveal another layer, while this technique adds another layer while still showing the layer before it. In this case, the material is paper, but I look forward to applying the concept to other mediums as well.
If you still don’t feel inspired to cut up paper, you could spend some of your weekend admiring the work of others.
It’s time for another mini DIY artist’s book. Today’s comes from Ginger Burrell.
Tonight’s video Paper Cuts (yes, it has the same title as last week’s flick) is the Michigan Daily’s look at the processes and products of University of Michigan lecturer Matt Shlian. Shlian’s approach to paper cutting is strikingly different from that of Ryan De La Hoz which I posted last Friday.
If last week’s video didn’t inspire you to take a knife or scissors to a piece of paper, perhaps this week’s film has. If you need another little prod, you could check out the instruction videos from Poppy’s Papercuts this weekend. (Apologies: these were the least irritating paper cutting instruction videos I could find, and a British instructor seemed appropriate since I am in England.)
This week’s DIY artist’s book is Dreaming made Easy by Judith Hoffman.
It’s one of those one-page books: I posted one called IF in June of 2015. Continue reading
Paper Cuts, a short film by Bradley Tangonan, is a brief glimpse into the work and thoughts of Ryan De La Hoz.
Perhaps looking at Ryan’s work will inspire you to experiment with cutting some paper this weekend.
As I mentioned last week, I am on holiday in England. I have prepared a post on making your own miniature book for each Sunday that I am away. I will post about other things if and when I can.
This week’s miniature book is Eric by Shaun Tan.
Shaun Tan is a highly acclaimed Australian illustrator. You can read his bio here. Here’s Tan’s description of Eric.
Eric
This is a small, Eric-sized edition of the story that originally appeared in Tales from Outer Suburbia, edited with some new artwork and layout design – which has proved to be very popular!
Eric is a foreign exchange student who comes to live with a typical suburban family. Although everyone is delighted with the arrangement, cultural misunderstandings ensure, beginning with Eric’s insistence on sleeping in a pantry cupboard rather than a specially prepared guest room. For more about ‘Eric’, visit his corner at Allen & Unwin.
The DIY mini book for today was found on Flickr (no, I can’t find the link again!) and is in jpeg format. The page is printable on legal size paper and looks like this:
The mini book consists of a cover, endpapers, 2-page frontispiece, and assorted illustrations taken from the original book. If you don’t have legal size paper, you could shrink to fit a smaller paper size and have a very tiny book.
There are no instructions, so feel free to assemble this any way you want! (I would cut and fold the two strips as an accordion, then add the cover.) You can find the printable page here.
Tan is a remarkable graphic artist. I recommend that you check out more of his work, including his paintings, on his website. You can find his books in the children’s section of many bookstores.
Dateline September 21, 2018:
In other book news:
David and I went to the Weston Library in Oxford (part of the Bodleian) to see Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth.l
https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/news/2017/mar-17
Samantha Shannon wrote a preview piece for The Guardian. She examines the exhibition from the points of view of both an average visitor and someone who grew up reading Tolkien and went on to create worlds of her own.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/31/drawn-into-tolkiens-world-exhibition
If you can get to Oxford before the 28th of October, I highly recommend that you take the opportunity to visit the exhibition.
Continuing with the idea that you can make anything out of paper, tonight’s flick is a stop motion animation done with paper. Mandy Smith’s film, The Move, is a very short story about moving in Amsterdam.
The film starts and ends with some paper flowers. If you would like to try your hand at making paper blooms this weekend, check out the patterns and instructions offered here.
I spent a lot of this week folding paper. I folded squares for the piece I am working on for the decade-themed exhibition.
