#papercut portrait

The traditional gift to give at the first wedding anniversary is something made of paper–it’s the Paper Anniversary. I often get contacted by clients who bought a ketubah a year before to create a gift for their first anniversary that echoes and complements the ketubah they have hanging in their home.

I make these Papercut portraits for couples. There are a few ways to do these. Usually the way it’s done is someone will take a photo and turn it into a simple two tone (black and white) format with only one papercut layer. I don’t do it that way.

I’m of the opinion that anyone can cut a piece of paper. It’s what you do with the image that’s important. I ask my clients to send me a favorite photo. And then I ask for lots more photos. In part it’s to get to know their personalities. With enough photos you’ll find moments in which one or the other wasn’t quite “posing” and something of their sense of self comes through.

I take the various photos and use them as a reference to make a new portrait that captures the couple better than any of the photos could. Maybe they’re standing straighter in one, but have a weird expression on their face. Maybe there’s an overall good photo but one is looking away from the other. Details in the dress might look good in one picture and a smile might really shine in another. There’s always something that can be improved. So I spend the majority of the time composing a new image from the references I get. This can get challenging when the light sources don’t match in the different images so I have to bring it all together in the final image by creating a unified light source (all those hundreds of life sketching sessions really helped in the end!!!)

So the papercut featured in this post is not actually from any one photo. I created it from a variety of reference sources. It is a completely unique, one of a kind image that I invented–that I think captures the couple better than any one photo could. People have this idea that photos perfectly capture reality. But sometimes an invented image does a better job of it than a camera can (I think a good example is how a work of fiction can convey a truth in a deeper sense than any facts and figures could).

Once that’s done the next step is to create a tone framework. If it were a two tone image it would be simply a matter of doing a dark layer with the shadow boundaries and calling it a day. But this is a four layer papercut. And each layer is one individual piece. Part of the difficulty in planning something like this is that I have to figure out which pieces thread over or under another layer to hide the bridges. There’s a lot of planning in this stage. I don’t do this by simply running it through a photoshop filter. I hand draw each individual tone map based on a full tone master image.

This stage also requires an element of faith. You have to hope it works out when it’s cut. And there’s no way to know for sure before its done. Look at the close up where you see the groom’s mouth in close detail. Seen in isolation it looks completely weird and decoupled from the image as a whole. But when stacked on top of the other layers it makes sense.

Then you have to hope the couple sees themselves in the image you created (I provide detailed proofs of how the final image will look). The interesting thing I found is that people have a distinct self-image and an even more distinct way of seeing their partner. Sometimes I’m told to change a smile ever so slightly. Narrow a chin just a tiny bit. Or make the height difference just a little greater by some non-quantifiable amount. It’s more of a sense that “something” has to conform slightly better to the image of themselves they have in their minds. This process is very delicate. And only once I finally get approval that their likeness is exactly how they want it, that’s when I finally start the papercutting.

The actual papercutting is the simplest and most relaxing part of the whole process!

If you would like to see more of what I do, you should check out my website at www.papercutsbyoren.com and if you’re on etsy, you can visit me at www.etsy.com/shop/papercutsbyoren (I would appreciate your liking my items!!!)
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