A Classic Art Form: Silhouette-Making

During the time I was growing up, I was surrounded by photographs and people who had a love for the camera. Since I am not a youngster, I believe this is true of most of the people who are alive during this period in history, but there was a time when people existed without cameras and they found a few other ways to capture their loved ones' likenesses. Aside from the portraits painted in oils, which cost a lot of money and took many hours of tiresome posing, silhouettes provided a lasting documentation for people's images. Webster's dictionary defines silhouette as "a two dimensional representation of the outline of an object, as a cutout or configurational drawing, uniformly filled in with black; miniature cutout of the outlines of a famous person's face." I first heard of silhouettes as an art form when, in a collection, I saw a young woman's silhouette painting. The outfit she was wearing was enhanced with watercolors and tiny beads. Although some of the beads had fallen off, the painting possessed a subtle but charming beauty. A silhouette was made by making a person sit between a paper tacked to a wall and a strong light. When the sitter's shadow was cast on the paper, the artist traced it. Then he cut it out and glued it on a board. The history of silhouettes is a long one that dates all the way back to old Chinese dynasties. After the Renaissance, silhouette making found some fame in Europe, and during the 18th century, it became a widespread hobby when a French artist, Chr