I had a really enjoyable day last Saturday at Astrid Jaekel's papercutting masterclass. Astrid has been artist in residence at West Cork Arts Centre for the last three weeks, and headed back to Edinburgh this weekend. It was lovely to have some new input from an artist from outside of west cork, although she spent some of her childhood here, and was revisiting her roots with this residency. Her loose, expressive drawing style, which she often translates into skillful paper-cuts gave me a new direction in my own work with cutting out photographs.
The masterclass was a chance for the dozen or so artists who came along to try their hand at her approach to working with paper and a scalpel. It was also a nice chance to get together and catch up with other artists from around the place, as working as an artist is often a solitary business, so a masterclass was a great opportunity to work alongside others.
Astrid encouraged us to draw, fast and loose, with continuous line, just working with the views of the Skibbereen rooftops that we could see from the windows. She then showed us how to adapt the drawing to work as a papercut without losing the quality of line that a quick drawing can capture. Here's my effort to the left<
Big thanks to Astrid for the class, and we hope to see her back here again sometime to complete the project she began here. You can see more of her work, and the drawings from Skibbereen here and you can see some images of the workshop here
In the meantime, I went back to the studio and tried a paper-cut of a portrait of my grandmother, cut out of a landscape photograph, from a book, then tried combining it with other landscapes behind. Which do you think works best?
Alison
The masterclass was a chance for the dozen or so artists who came along to try their hand at her approach to working with paper and a scalpel. It was also a nice chance to get together and catch up with other artists from around the place, as working as an artist is often a solitary business, so a masterclass was a great opportunity to work alongside others.
Astrid encouraged us to draw, fast and loose, with continuous line, just working with the views of the Skibbereen rooftops that we could see from the windows. She then showed us how to adapt the drawing to work as a papercut without losing the quality of line that a quick drawing can capture. Here's my effort to the left<
Big thanks to Astrid for the class, and we hope to see her back here again sometime to complete the project she began here. You can see more of her work, and the drawings from Skibbereen here and you can see some images of the workshop here
In the meantime, I went back to the studio and tried a paper-cut of a portrait of my grandmother, cut out of a landscape photograph, from a book, then tried combining it with other landscapes behind. Which do you think works best?
Alison
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