After I got some advice, and with the upcoming magazine contest, I decided that maybe I should really look back into doing the cut paper. I always enjoyed (which is probably a surprise to a lot of you) to do this technique. I've had a mixed relationship with it since I knew I got most of the scholarship based on this but I didn't want to be limited and just known for doing this...
I went and searched for few Japanese folklores that sounded interesting to me and sketched out few of them. The one I decided to do was about a mermaid. The story is about young fishermens who hear a beautiful voice near the sea. They go over to where they heard the song, and they catch a beautiful mermaid. She pleas them to let them go, but at first they do not want to. They were thinking about showing the mermaid for money or selling her. Then she says she will tell them a sea secret. They say okay, and she tells them that a big Tsunami is coming, so they better flee their town. The young fishermens hurry back to their town and tell them what just happened. The towns people believe them and flee, but the town near them do not. Just as the mermaid said, the Tsunami comes the fishermens town stay alive.
That is the jest of the story, but somehow, I feel like perhaps the mermaid made the Tsunami come... although it doesn't make sense about how the fishermens lived.
Here are the sketches and the piece I am currently working on. It is hard to see what it would look like. The 3rd sketch is drawn opposite because when you cut it out it turns the other way...
