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Paper Portraits for Everyone
by Paul Overton
Back in 2009, I was looking to take a technique that I had long used for making stencils and modify it to work with paper. The studio I had just moved into was small and had little ventilation, so it was necessary that I avoid spray paint and other toxic, propellant-based media.
By reversing the order of how the layers were stacked and redrawing in order to leave only the most crucial details, I came up with a technique that virtually anyone can use to produce vivid and pleasing portraits from little more than paper and glue.
Since this tutorial originally aired, I’ve had hundreds of emails with readers’ portrait photos attached and little notes from people about how well the technique worked and how excited they were to have made something so cool as a gift.
DudeCraft – Paper Cut Portrait Tutorial from Paul Overton on Vimeo.
Most of these folks started out with doubts about how their project would turn out, but quickly came to see how really simple the whole thing is. You don’t need to be overfurnished in the talent department to get a great result here and, as projects go, this one is pretty quick to the finish.
Also, I would not recommend that anyone under the age of sixteen be allowed to use an X-Acto knife. There’s just too much that can go wrong. Having said that, young adults can still get some pretty great results simply by blowing up the photo to a larger scale and using scissors to do the cutting.
