It's one of the smallest designs I've done so far, and it's another personal favourite! This papercut was a gift to celebrate a 10th wedding anniversary. The element I'm particularly fond of are the lilies; they turned out far better than I anticipated so they're something I'm considering featuring in more future designs.
I've been a busy bee over the past month - I've had a few more papercuts to complete, I've got a new job, and managed to get away to Zante for a week too! So it's been all go! But I wanted to share a papercut I'm particularly proud of which I finished shortly before my holiday a fortnight ago.
This is, without a doubt, the most challenging papercut I've done! So far all my designs have been nature-orientated. Using organic shapes means I can be more flexible with my designs as the natural shapes can be easily manipulated to piece together a good composition. The brief for this cut, however, was that the artwork had to be New-York-themed as it was a gift to celebrate the engagement of the client's daughter (an old school friend of mine) which took place in Central Park. To create a successful paper cut design using manmade, rigid structures was admittedly a challenge, but one I'm pleased to have undertaken. It's helped me break out of my comfort zone and expand my portfolio, and the client was extremely pleased - as were her daughter and fiancé!
So this is my first blog update in about 3 months! My family and I were sadly given some devastating news at the end of January regarding a close friend of ours whom we have known for a number of years; a genuinely wonderful lady who I considered to be the central figure in my extended family. The world truly is a far darker place without her. She naturally possessed all the positive attributes most people strive to have, and the fact that she has been taken so prematurely is unfathomable. She is so missed. So it goes without saying that my art has taken a backseat over the past couple of months, but recently I have decided to get back into the swing of things.
Following the papercut I created for my work colleague at Christmas, I've had quite a few people express their interest in commission pieces! This is a cut I did for a friend of mine, which she wanted to pass down through the family. I thought the foliage in my previous papercut worked really well to frame the typography but I didn't want this one to be too similar and resemble a 'repeat', so I wanted to try something a bit different. Working with the surname 'Warren' my mum suggested incorporating a rabbit into the design, which inspired the woodland theme.
This one was a real challenge to design (ensuring it came out as one whole stencil) but I was really happy with how it turned out, and more importantly my friend was thrilled with the design! I'm fairly certain there will be more animal-inspired papercuts from me in the future!
Every Christmas all of the staff who work alongside me on the delicatessen counter take part in 'Secret Santa', and this year I decided to make my gift instead of buying something. Papercutting is a technique I very much admire and this was my first 'proper' attempt at a fairly detailed cut, which was inspired by my visit to Rob Ryan's London-based exhibition last month.
I incorporated my colleague's and her family's initials in to the surrounding design and used their surname 'Guest' as the focal point. I'm chuffed to bits with the outcome and my friend was thrilled with her gift! I'm looking to seriously branch-out in to papercutting and intend for it to play a large part in my portfolio come the new year!
I hope you all had a great weekend! Just a quick post to say that my facebook page 'Hannah Webb Illustration' is currently down, but it will be back up and running in the next couple of weeks - my apologies! In the meantime please feel free to follow me on instagram and twitter for other updates; @hw_illustration
On a different note, I'm finally going to visit Rob Ryan's exhibition at the Sims Reed Gallery in London tomorrow! I've been wanting to go for weeks now so I'm really looking forward to it. My mum is accompanying me this time which will be great, I hope she enjoys it as much as I will; but I dare say we'll squeeze in a bit of Christmas shopping on Oxford Street whilst we're there, which I know she'll enjoy!
