Japanese Cut Paper Class

Last week I did a taster class in Japanese cut paper art. This is a traditional Japanese technique where layers of paper (usually washi paper) are cut into to create a picture. Most of them tend to be very involved and intricate, and take years to master. Luckily we started with a relatively easy piece and our lovely teacher had set it all up ahead of time for us, so that we just followed exactly what she told us to do. She had chosen an image from a piece of art by the artist Sharaku and she had drawn out the template of where we should cut, so that there was little room to go wrong. The template is placed over about 5 layers of paper which are stapled together and then we cut out sections of the image, depending on what colour we want and where. I have shown the steps below. I was rather pleased with the result!