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 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!