Since you are of the younger generation let me tell you just what a silhouette is, and why.

It is a profile, or side view, of the head of a person cut out of black paper and mounted on a white card, or else cut out of white paper with a piece of black silk back of it so that it looks like a shadow in miniature of the sitter.

It was so called after M. de Silhouette, a French Minister of Finance in 1759; his rigid economy in the conduct of his office caused his name to be tacked on to everything cheap and as photography had not yet been discovered and painted portraits were costly, the paper outlines filled in with black were the cheapest substitute known and hence the name.

But as the years rolled by silhouettes became a dignified and honored art and so when our great grandfather and grandmother wanted to have their pictures made - not taken - they went to a shears and paste artist who cut out their silhouettes.

Fig. 54. Silhouettes Of Your Great-Grand-Pa And Great-Grandma (When They Were Young)

While the art of cutting silhouettes is all but a lost one because photography is so easy and shows all the details, still you can make them with some black glazed paper and a pair of sharp shears with a little practice.

Take a sheet of black glazed paper40 about 2 inches wide and 3 inches long and seat your sitter with the side of his or her face turned toward you. Now with a pair of sharp shears begin to cut the paper, starting at the chin and going on up the face to the hair, then around to the back of the head and finally cutting out the collar and bust.

40 Glazed paper can be bought at stationery stores or you can get it from Dennison Mfg. Co., 5th Ave. and 26th St., N. Y. C.

All the time you are cutting you must keep your artistic eye on the profile of your sitter and your mechanical eye on your shears and paper and you will be truly surprised to find how little knack it takes to get a reasonably faithful likeness. A pair of silhouettes are shown in Fig. 54.