50-50 paper bag collage images

Light Junky, was inspired by a colony of moths in AZ and some great bags from Japan. This was all cut out with a little background thrown in (after the beetle I felt comfortable with bugs and had to do another bug).
Banksy on Health Care, was inspired by some Banksy graffiti in the mission- all cut out.
B-Day II, was the second of the Bunny Wars images. All cut out with some great graphics from a department store shopping bag.
80's superhero library was a classic bag image build with found bag images and pieces of bag images.
Beetle, was my first paper cutout in the classic, papal picado sense, combined with found bag images and background fun
Kilroy was here I & II, I wanted to update Kilroy was here for the two wars we are presently fighting and explore my own cut outs and backgrounds.

Btw, all these images were created by Leigh Radtke and belong to Leigh Radtke. All were created using paper bags, and are collages of the cut and paste kind.

50-50 update

Well I now have 37 pieces created (I hope to get some pictures up soon) and I have been doing quite a number of "studies". For example I love Matisse's paper cut outs.

Henri Matisse, http://www.henri-matisse.net

so I decided to do my own paper bag version inspired by “The Clown"(Cover of Jazz) 1943 - wow what fun! Then I came across an old birthday card whose image I love and I decided to create one of my own out of Safeway Logos. Then I found a small globe on a Cala/Bell Market bag and realized that the Bunnies have declared war on us in WWB = World War B!!! I have also been creating my own papal picado or paper cutout patterns in preparation for my Altered Barbie piece and this years Day of the Dead installation. Now I am by no means as accomplished as this amazing artist cutter-

Carol Menninga, http://www.paper-cutouts.com

but she is something to aspire to! So far 50-50 has really pushed and pulled me in new directions and helped me to discover something new to be done with paper bags. During the last 50-50 stories emerged as I meditated on bag images and built new images with them. But this year I am an explorer, going where no baglander has gone before.

50-50 Day 24

It has been interesting- with all the solid color bags I have been cutting out more shapes instead of just building images from existing images or pieces of existing shapes so I am combining paper cut out with existing and built bag images. This actually gives me more freedom- or perhaps I just realized that I actually can draw/cut and I am now not relying on just finding the images or pieces of images that I need, but I am creating my own from scratch much more often than I did before. I am also experimenting with backgrounds, not so much white… not sure if this is a radical departure or not but it feels like it is!!!! Here is an example, I was listening to the Baseball game yesterday and looking out of the window, I saw the image of a tree, telephone wires with clouds and blue sky behind, and I liked that so I used paper cut out for the clouds(a blue bag with cut out clouds on white mat board instead of using TJ waves), a plant from a book store bag, cut out black strips from a Tokyo Banana bag, the inside of a TJ palm tree provided the fence pole, and wallah, I created my own version of tree /plant, wires, blue sky and clouds. I am starting to think of how to create more of what I want – rather then create what I see or intuit only (intuit example, cut off the head and claws of a lobster and it becomes a ray gun or the TJ waves = clouds). Another example, I was given a beautiful red and yellow bag with the red coming up from the bottom with a wavy transition line between red and yellow, wavy line intuit or see waves, so I created a viking ship, I cut and detailed my own ship(I created what I wanted), to ride these wild red waves and the wind is howling! .... fun!
What is really fun about 50-50 is that I am living in a constant state of creativity due to constantly working on all these pieces. So I am always looking for inspiration, today it is

Kilroy Was Here

... I am going to make my own bag version and try to update him for the 2 wars we are presently fighting. I will either find a loaf of bread or head to use and cut the hands or cut the whole thing, we shall see. I draw roughly what I want then fine tune by cutting.... some people use paint/pencil to add details, I cut!!!