Paper Cut Art Design
Like any contemporary arts, paper cut art starts off with a design from an artist. Paper cut designs now found in China are of the following types:
1. Inspirational Designs - unique one of a kind design inspired by an artist's thoughts, personal experiences and/or surroundings.
 
2. Influenced Designs - designs created out of an artist's view of an existing popular subject like a scene in a traditional folk lore, images of popular figures e.g. Chairman Mao Ze Dong or a Buddha figurine.
 
3. Existing Photo/Art/Picture Paper Cut Design Rendition or Conversion - Popular traditional drawings, paintings, photos, water colors or even current portaits of people are used as a base for the paper cut art design and rendered as a design that can be sculpted or cut on paper.
Paper cut art is designed with already a pre-conception on how the paper will be cut. It is either going to be a "positive" or "negative" rendition of the drawing. Simply stated, the drawing is cut either by cutting the dark parts or lines out or cutting the white parts out. The paper cut design is drawn is a way that there is always a continuous unbroken line all throughout the drawing. If this is not achieved pieces of the design will fall out when it is cut out. Hence sometimes some lines are cleverly imposed on the drawing to interconnect a shape with the rest of the shapes in the design.
Paper Cut Template / Pattern Creation
Paper cut designs are usually hand drawn by artists on white paper. Some artists use an ordinary pencil and some use a paint brush. Younger artists now use computers with a digitizer pad to draw their designs. A rare few artists cut directly on the paper without the use of any pre-drawn pattern.
Numerous old original paper cut design drawings by folk artists have been lost because the original drawing was not stored properly or eventually degraded. No electronic copies of the original drawings are made by these folk artists.
Once a design is finalized either on paper or in a computer, a copy of the design is made either by photocopying the original design or printing the design from the computer. The drawing can be magnified or reduced in size during the printing or photocopying.
This copy of the design is then used as the base pattern from which the paper cut out is traced using a knife or scissors.
Paper Cutting or Sculpting
1. Paper Cutting Tools
The basic tools for paper cutting are scalpel like knives of various sizes and scissors.
A cutting board is also used when the paper is sculpted using a knife. The board surface has a clayish soft texture which prevents the knife from hitting a hard surface when it penetrates through the paper. Different regions in china have their own version of this cutting board. Some use a mixture of lard and ash, some use a mixture of clay and wax.
2. Xuan Paper
Xuan paper is the paper of choice to make paper cut art. It is also used for Chinese calligraphy. Xuan Paper originated from a prefecture called Xuan in Anhui province in China. Currently, Jingxian County in Anhui is the major Xuan Paper producer in China. Sometimes people mistakenly refer to Xuan Paper as rice paper. Rice paper is made using rice straw fibers but Xuan paper is made using fiber from the pine tree, specifically pine trees from Xuan City are said to make the best Xuan Paper. Xuan paper is available in a variety of colors like black, red, green, blue, white, gold, silver, yellow and brown.
3. Paper Cutting Methods
a.) Knife Sculpted
Several layers of Xuan Paper are put under the base pattern and a sharp pointed knife is used to sculpt out the lines. For simple patterns, up to 40 layers of paper can be cut at the same time. For complex and intricate designs, some paper cut craftsmen only cut 4 - 8 layers of paper at a time. A good indication of the quality of the cut is to check how round the circular patterns or curves are cut and how straight the long straight lines are cut.. Experienced paper cut craftsmen can cut perfect circles using a knife. The beginners usually have some rough edges on their curves,circles and straight lines.
b.) Scissor Cut
Scissor cut paper art is not as widespread as the knife sculpted paper cuts. First, scissor cutting cannot handle the extremely complex patterns that can be achieved with knife sculpting. Next, scissor cutting cannot simultaneously cut as many layers of paper as in knife sculpting. A practical number is around 8 layers of paper being scissor cut simultaneously. Some very skilled paper cut craftsmen can cut complex patterns using scissors only. But these kind of highly skilled scissor cut craftsmen are dwindling. Scissor cut paper art can also be done without the use of a pattern. The artist just cuts the symmetrical pattern from memory. A lot of scissor cut paper cut art has symmetrical patterns. The paper is folded and cuts and incisions are made to create the patterns. Non-symmetrical subjects are also rendered using scissor cutting. Scissor cut paper art of landscapes, flora and fauna and even portraits are made by some artists in China.
Multi-colored Paper Cut Art
In some regions in China, paper cut art is also painted using water color. First, the paper art is cut out of Xuan Paper. Then the different shapes are colored to make it look like a painting.
A more complex way of adding color to paper cut art is the use of multiple layers of colored paper. A colored paper cut made this way can have from 4 to eight layers of paper. For example the background landscape is cut using brown paper, the foreground subjects like a house or trees are cut using different colored paper and then these layers are perfectly super imposed so that a single coherent picture is formed.
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