About Silhouette

A Silhouette is a view of an object or scene consisting of the outline image or design in a single solid, flat color (usually black), giving a featureless interior. The Silhouette name had come from French finance Minister Etienne de Silhouette. Because his name was nearly same with doing things cheaply and he liked to make these images himself, this art form was named after him.

The term Silhouette is usually applied to human portraits in profile, in black against white (or vice versa), either it is painted or cut from paper. They do not show any facial expression. A Silhouette is a form of artwork and these are most frequently made by a skilled silhouette artist by looking at a subject's profile, whether it is in person or from a photograph. They simply cutting out their things or parts and done it with a freehand without using any devices.

In Europe, shadow portraits and scenes were produced by drawing the outline cast by candlelight or lamp. When paper came into exists, they were widely used freehand directly from life. From 1790 to 1840, in America Silhouette was highly popular. Later in 18th century, drawings in Silhouette became very popular in Europe and they replaced miniature paintings at French and German courts.

Advantages of Silhouette:

In military, Silhouettes of ships, planes, tanks, and other vessels are used by soldiers and sailors for recognition purposes.

In graphic design, Silhouette is used to separate (mask) a portion of an image so that it does not show; For instance, a background.

In music videos, Silhouettes of their bodies have been used by recording artists in their music to make the videos more attractive.

In television, earlier days for iPod ads portrayed Silhouetted dancers wearing an iPod and ear buds.

Finally, Silhouette popularity was encouraged by the interest in Lavater's science of physiognomy and by the strong interest in classical art, especially in Greek black-figure vase painting. At present, these are also used in many techniques.