Another Peek at My Process with Handmade Paper Artwork

For this piece, Leaf Mandala (private collection) I sketched the lovely heart shaped leaves in a basket in my window, looking for leaf forms to play with. On the lower right side, I really liked the swoop of leaves from left to right.

I got out some tracing paper and played with those leaves, and experimented with making a pattern from them. When I like the pattern I created, I isolated the "motif" (outlined in black below). This became my "pattern" for the leaves in the collage which follows this photo.

 

I arranged 8 "swags" of leaves in a mandala shape. Then I made a paper pattern for each leaf in the "swag" and cut out 8 of each from my handmade paper. LOTS AND LOTS of leaf shapes. Then each leaf was hand-embossed on my texture tiles: colored wax was added to the raised lines of the embossing; all the leaves were over-dyed with a beautiful blue watercolor dye, with the wax acting as a resist; and finally I brushed gold paint lightly over the shapes. They were then reassembled into the 8 "swag" patterns and used to created the Leaf Mandala blow.