Sinful Folk illustrator Nikki McClure’s painstaking papercut process. PHOTO: Papercut by Nikki McClure by LSO – The Mark Olympia on Flickr.
New York Times best-selling illustrator and author Nikki McClure and I know each other through our children’s school and our mutual interest in locally sourced art and supporting local artists. Nikki’s son and my children both attended the Lincoln Options Elementary School, and we are both very involved in the local arts community in the South Sound area in the Pacific Northwest. We first met at a Solstice Celebration that featured local children in an impromptu theatrical celebration of the season.
Nikki created the cover of Sinful Folk as one of her signature papercut pieces, but went in a new direction for the internal illustrations, which were created with charcoal. After reading the book in 2012, Nikki created her own graphical interpretation of SINFUL FOLK, which was accepted as the cover in late 2012.
I love the way that Nikki used papercuts and charcoal as the medium for illustration, as both are art forms that were used in the Middle Ages, and both styles of art were well known in the medieval era.
