Blake Baldwin
Artist | Hobbyist | Artisan Crafts

United States

I started kirie after a trip to a kirie museum in Shibukawa, Japan and decided this was going to be my hobby. I started out doing Elfquest pictures because they're my favorite comics and they inspired me to work harder. Then I started practicing on anything that caught my fancy from google.com, and that's where I am now. I can do just about any picture/photo/art with a high level of detail. My next goal is to do larger scale work, maybe as large as poster size. I'd love to do requests if you would like to see something done in this form.
Kirie is literally "cutting picture" in Japanese. Using a picture, black paper, a cutting board, and a pen knife, I carefully cut out all non-black shapes on the picture. The resulting continuous-line black paper is then glued to a sheet of clean white paper. The effect is more dramatic when you look at a piece with your own eyes instead of through a computer screen, as there is a 3-D effect when looking at it for real.
I have a folder set aside in my gallery that shows the kirie process

Current Residence: Portland, OR
Favourite genre of music: Rock
Favourite style of art: Kirie, manga
MP3 player of choice: iPod