Back in November I offered to be the first artist to create a window display for our local consignment shop, the Plaid Peacock. I signed up for the month of February thinking that this would give me some time after the holidays to work on my idea.
I knew that I really wanted to make a large paper cut to hang in the window but I wasn't sure how it was all going to work so I made a small 8.5 x 11 mock up of my idea.
The window is around 71 inches high and about 85 inches wide with another smaller window to one side. The first thing I did was to cut butcher paper the size of the window and so I could see how large my peacock needed to be. (Oliver really liked helping me with this part.) I quickly realized I would not be able to easily obtain a sheet of paper large enough to make the peacock out of one piece.
So I came up with a new plan to cut the peacock into three parts. In an ideal hanging situation, each part would be spaced just a little behind the other giving it some dimension. In the end though, we ended up hanging everything from one large curtain rod.
Using tracing paper I started to refine my bigger shapes and add more detail.
I transfered the pencil from the tracing paper onto the final white paper and started cutting out the shapes. I chose a two ply white paper which is very strong and flexible but it was not easy to cut.
