Behind the Scenes: Creating a Self Portrait of Cut Paper

If you fol­low me on Face­book, Twit­ter, Insta­gram, Pin­ter­est or Tum­blr, you might’ve noticed that I changed my avatar. After years of it being the same cut paper self­ie, I final­ly updat­ed my pic­ture with anoth­er col­laged por­trait. The tim­ing was intentional—I’m head­ed to ICON9 in a cou­ple of weeks and want­ed the image for new busi­ness cards.

While work­ing, I record­ed video and com­bined some of the clips into a 4‑minute long com­pi­la­tion. It’s not every­thing I did when make cre­at­ing this por­trait, but it gives you a good idea of my process.

For tools, I use:

• A nice (sharp) pair of scis­sors. For paper ONLY. Keep those things as pure as the white snow.
• PVA book bind­ing glue. This is per­ma­nent and not very for­giv­ing, so once some­thing is down, it’s down. I use a tiny brush to apply.
• X‑Acto knife
• Self-heal­ing cut­ting mat
• For paint­ing on paper (as seen in the first cou­ple of shots), I prime it with Liq­ui­tex Mat­te Medium

As far as paper goes, I gath­er from a lot of places. Kraft paper, water­col­or paint­ings, con­struc­tion paper, mag­a­zines… it all goes in my giant collection.

If you have any ques­tions about col­lage or my con­struc­tion tech­niques, let me know! I’d be hap­py to answer them.