The Frog Watches

Here is June's fairytale. The Frog Prince watches as the princess despairs of retrieving her golden ball from the bottomless pool. It looks like a good opportunity for the frog. If I did this one again, I would make the bushes a little less odd in shape.

Purple Grapes

Here is the one paper cut that I have managed to cut in the last two weeks. My husband has been keeping me busy helping with our book project on the first official tourists to Zion National Park. We are almost done, so I hope to get back to cutting soon.

Kelton Grave

This is a bigger paper cut that I have been working on the past few weeks. It is 10 x 13 inches. This is a picture of a headstone in a lonely cemetery out in the desert north of the Great Salt Lake. Kelton was once a town along the Union Pacific railroad. It was a thriving little community until the railroad built a new route across the lake and bypassed all the towns along the original route. This eventually killed all those communities. There isn't much left of the towns. Even the foundations are almost gone. The cemetery is still at Kelton, but it is neglected. In twenty or thirty years, it might be gone as well. The wire fence around it is the only thing that keeps the atvs out of it. You can't read anything on the wooden headstones that are left. I tried to capture the feeling of neglect in that dry landscape.

Last Summer's Experiment

Last summer, I saw an artist at the Salt Lake Art Festival use linocut block prints and watercolors to create some beautiful small botanical art. I decided to try a similar thing but with paper cuts. Here are some samples of what I came up with. I first cut the paper cut then I painted the watercolor underneath. The cut is glued just at the top so when it is hanging, the paper is slightly raised above the watercolor. That gives it a three dimensional look. These are some of my husband's favorite cuts.
I hung these two up at an art show over Memorial Day weekend and sold them both. I guess that means that other people like them too. The last two weeks, I have been working on a couple more of cuts like these. I will post them soon.