After a busy early summer of Exhibitions, I have been able to get back to
completing a papercut which I began at the start of this year.

I had found some skeleton leaves, and planned to design a work around
the idea of the changes in leaves as they decay over autumn and winter.

I painted several sheets of watercolour paper, trying to make interesting
textures and colours in the process.






After designing a papercut centre of skeleton leaves, I began to cut out the
leaf shapes from the back of the paper, using a sharp scalpel.






I cut out some leaf shapes, and folded them to create some structure, as I
like to make my papercuts quite sculptural, on different levels.





I also cut out simplified skeleton leaves, to form part of the design.





Then I began to arrange the coloured leaves around the centre in a wreath-like
shape, and added a painted paper Death's Head Hawk Moth.





I also coloured the background by printing leaf shapes from a skeleton leaf
papercut.

After adding some painted paper butterfly wings, and a good deal of re-arranging,
I was finally happy that the result goes some way to reflecting my initial idea:

"Change and Decay"