A papercutting years in the making...

Earlier this year, I started trying to do paper cuttings for the various animal and nature themed days that come up: World Turtle Day, Endangered Species Day, World Pangolin Day. It was fun, but quickly became overwhelming. When summer (my busiest season at work) started, I decided that I would only do the paper projects I'd already committed to through September: a guest book for my brother's wedding, a papercutting that's yet to be made public but is due later this summer, and this one.

A friend of mine asked if I'd consider doing a dragonfly papercutting for a silent auction at the Dragonfly Society of the Americas Annual Meeting, which happened to be in Minnesota this year. I've wanted to make a dragonfly for years (I have notes and photos for one I hoped to make in 2014) but have been slightly scared of the immensity of the task, so having a deadline helped!

That same friend and I found this injured dragonfly (a female Midland Clubtail) at work last month, which was the perfect opportunity to get some clear photos for a papercutting.

This project was easily the largest and most complicated piece I've taken on.

I worked with the picture, transferred the design to my paper, and got down to work on July 4!

It was fun to see it slowly emerge, and a nice excuse to stream an absurd amount of tv/movies.

In the end, it took between 40-50 hours to complete, and that in a week that included a dear friend coming back to town after I hadn't seen them in years, a wedding shower for my brother and his fiancée, work, and ...well, other things, but I skipped out on everything but those so this could be finished in time.

I finished it July 10, and handed it off to my friend to go to the conference July 11!I used a floating frame to make it clear that it's a papercutting, not a print or other illustration. Despite loving the way it looks in the floating frame, I took pictures on a piece of posterboard, because it's easier to see the dragonfly in photos that way, and because the only way I could get a photo without a lot of glare was by setting it on the floor.

The finished dragonfly is 20 inches wide by 16 inches tall, a scale that's not really obvious in any of the above pictures. So just one more...

I'm very tired, and very happy with the final product.

In quite possibly the best compliment a papercutting of mine has ever received, folks at the conference were able to identify the species and sex of the dragonfly from just a photo of the piece! I'm thrilled it was well-received.