As it gets cold out and I take care of my little baby, I’ve used my small scraps of time to create animals out of small scraps of paper.

I created three mountain dragons on three 2 x 2 canvases:

What I enjoyed most about these was making little environments for the dragons - rolling green hills and spiky mountains, along with the occasional cloud and a yellow sun when possible.

These were fun to make, and, I knew I needed some way to ‘seal’ them or to protect the delicate paper from the world. I ended up mounting each canvas on a single board and enclosing the pieces in this frame:

In a way, this is why I started making paper animals in bookmarks, too. I needed some way to protect the tiny collages from the world, and enclosing each piece in a plastic sleeve worked well.

I’ve made so many cat bookmarks I have lost count, and I love it.

I’ve made so many bookmarks I’ve lost count. It’s somewhere in the hundreds, maybe approaching one thousand these days.

To make my paper animals, I paint on either yupo, watercolor paper, handmade recycled fabric paper, or duralar, and I cut the paper out and create an animal from it.

The paint I utilize is either gouache, iulie watercolors, Emily Grace Palettes watercolors, Coliro watercolors, and the occasional swatch of pure acrylic. Sometimes, I will also paint in oil on yupo paper and clip out the oil painting. This is a bit more rare, but I have made animals from it.

Above is my setup with some Himi gouache, iulie watercolors, Emily Grace Palettes, and Coliro watercolors, and some cats that I created from each set of paint.

I’ve also been making large dragons in addition to the tiny dragons.

The large dragons are made from recycled paper made of t-shirts from Two Hands Paperie in Boulder. I love the super-textured feel of this paper and it’s great that it comes from something that would otherwise end up in a landfill.

The dragon pieces are fun because they change colors in different lights. That’s the beauty of using iridescent watercolors - there are delightful color shifts to be found in every corner.

That’s all I got for now! It’s been fun to work on these paper animals throughout all of 2022. Catch you next time!

For about a year, I’ve been working quite a bit on making animal art out of paper. The first animal collages, I made seven years ago when I lived in my apartment in Austin, TX.

This is a bird collage I made in the fall of 2015:

After working on and off with paper for about seven years or so, I’ve enjoyed getting handmade paper at Two Hands Paperie in Boulder and coloring the paper with iridescent watercolors in order to make these animals. The paper is a good deal because it is made of recycled t-shirts. The watercolors are all handmade - I utilize Coliro watercolors, iulie watercolors, and Emily Grace Palettes to make these.

The effect is very shiny! I love how these look when I walk past them, or when the light falls across each one and the iridescent watercolors light up. It’s iridescent watercolor on black or dark paper, and yet it’s so bright!