Girl with Braids

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's "Girl with Braids (Mädchen mit Zöpfen)" is an example of German Impressionism from around 1917 and it looked like an interesting candidate for a paper-cut interpretation. As usual, I ensured that the black layer is in one connected piece and I decided to reverse the orientation of the piece as part of the variation.

After sandwiching the piece between two pieces of glass, I began to appreciate some of the problems inherent in the spikiness of the design. This resulted in very busy shadows that detracted from the sharp lines. To soften the shadows, I introduced a third piece of glass that allows me to incorporate a new background layer of heavy-duty tracing paper. This gave more diffuse shadows and this tracing-paper layer also produced its own drop-shadow on the white paper background.

What this suggests is that the gap between the foreground and background should be inversely proportional to the spikiness of the foreground. A simple design such as The Shepherdess can be further away from the background without the shadows interfering.

Although this is hard to capture in the photo, I have another layer between the foreground and tracing-paper where I have placed gold-leaf (23.5 caret) behind the eyes. This gives a bright glint when the viewer, picture and light-source are in the appropriate configuration.