Lessons on vytynanka

What is vytinanka? It is an openwork pattern cut from black, white or colored paper. To be more precise, it is a technique of cutting paper.

We know that the paper is from China. There the first time and started to cut. And wherever there was paper, there was the art of paper cutting. In Europe it was common silhouette cutting (particularly portraits) in Latin America – story carving, etc There is an art and in neighboring Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania. In Russia, for some reason it has not received such development.

And in each area vytinanka acquired stylistic and meaningful features inherent in the perception of the people who lived here.

In the Belarusian vytinanka formed trends that can be described as follows:

• the principle of reusable folding (this means that a sheet of paper is folded repeatedly, in different directions and at different angles in order to obtain certain slots);
• create an image from the slots of simple geometric shapes (i.e. even the most complex image is combined from a set of triangles, rhombuses, squares, circles, half-moons, almond-shaped petals, etc.) of various shapes;
• relative monochromaticity (usually used, not counting the background, one, two, maximum three colors of paper, sometimes used gold or silver foil);
• image symmetry (as a consequence of reusable folding); types of symmetry: linear, mirror, centric; - decorative (due to the stylization required in the generalization of form (see the second principle) and symmetry (previous principle)).

What sets it apart from the applique is that the entire image is a single piece of paper. If not pasted vytinanka to raise in one area, it will rise all together, and will remind crocheted napkin.

Here is actually a set of initial information about vytinanka.

Let me just Remind you that the main material in this technique is paper, and the tool is scissors (and grandmothers cut those that are designed for shearing sheep).