Mastering Silhouettes

Book excerpt: "Silhouettes are an increasingly popular form of capturing portraits with a history that goes back hundreds of years. In this unique how-to book, silhouette artist Charles Burns teaches the basic techniques needed for making silhouettes: learning the proportions of a profile, tracing a shadow, reducing an image, drawing and cutting freely, and his own 'natural waves' technique. You'll learn to create scissor-cut portraits, painted silhouettes, hollow-cut silhouettes, silhouettes painted on glass, caricatures, and more, as well as how to use color, appliqué, and three-dimensional effects in creative and innovative ways and how to mount and display your creations."--Page 4 of cover.