Paper-cut frog and carp pattern and production tutorial
If you observe traditional paper-cut patterns carefully, you will find that frog or toad patterns often appear in paper-cut works. Among them, frogs have the meaning of attracting wealth because they can "wow", and toads are an important traditional Chinese medicine that can play a therapeutic role, so they are also regarded as the embodiment of health and longevity. The paper-cut carp pattern represents wealth and harvest because the word "fish" in carp has the same pronunciation as the word "yu". At the same time, because the story related to carp "Carp Jumps over the Dragon Gate" is well-known, carp also means to be promoted to a higher level. The combination of carp itself and different patterns also represents different meanings.
1. Preparation: Take two pieces of colored paper and fold them twice, folding each piece into four layers, or take eight pieces of colored paper and staple them in two parts.
2. Tracing: Use a pencil to draw the pictures on the stapled paper, paying attention to highlighting the characteristic parts of the two animals. The frog’s big eyes, big mouth, powerful hind legs, and round body; the fish’s streamlined body, orderly arrangement of scales, etc.
3. Cutting: Start with the eyes when cutting the frog, exaggerating the characteristics of the big eyes and mouth. For the body pattern, you can just cut a few lines and add some dots for decoration, or you can cut a few flowers for decoration. The flowers and plants combined with the frog are related to its living habits, and are mostly water plants, reeds, etc. (see the paper-cut work "Frog Croaking"). The toad and frog in the traditional paper-cut theme "Cut Out the Five Poisons" are basically the same shape. You can follow the cutting techniques of frogs to cut the toad.
Paper-cut work "Frog Croaking"
The way to cut carp is to start from under the eyes, cut the head and then cut the body. Since the fish scales are arranged in an orderly manner, after cutting one row from the head, cut another row. Only in this way can the fish scales be cut in order and not easily damaged (see the paper-cut work "Fish Leaping"). Fish is widely used in folk paper-cutting themes. Its homophonic pronunciation is such as "Lian (Lotus) has more than (Fish) every year", which expresses the hope for a good year; "Fish Diamond Lotus" is related to marriage, &ldq"uo; fish" means male, "lotus" symbolizes female, and "fish diamond lotus" means the intimate union of men and women, happiness and harmony.
Paper-cut work "Fish Leaping"
