
So today we are looking at a very influential artist Henri Matisse.In his late 60’s he became very ill which made painting very difficult so he began to cut into painted paper with scissors to make ideas for work. After a while he chose the cut outs over painting, starting a new medium of “painting with scissors”.As he was one of the first artists to use paper collage as an art form he is probably one of the biggest influences to my art as collage is one of my favourite art forms.
You will need coloured paper or paint on paper, paper/card, scissors and glue.
You are not going to draw on your paper and then cut out you are just going to cut out shapes. So don’t think just cut!! You can use however many pieces of coloured paper as you want but I think 3/4 choices are probably enough. If you don’t have coloured paper or paint to paint on paper, find magazines instead etc. The pieces left over might also lend themselves to interesting shapes.Play around with positioning your pieces to see which layout you like best.

So I have used 4 colours and just cut some pieces out.

I then played around with the layout.


Even though you have cut random shapes can they be put together to look like something?

I think my pieces look like plants. When you are happy with your layout just glue your pieces down.
I think this is a relaxing project to do and if you are interested in his art there are lots of videos on line about his work, life and might give you some inspiration.Have fun.