Barrack Obama Silhouettes

Silhouette Art of President Obama

 

Silhouettes of Famous People

Many people love silhouette art.  One of them is the current president of US. Mr. Barack Hussein Obama, the 44^th president of the US.  He is of the Christian religion and was born on August 4th, 1961.  He is also knwon to be a reputable lawyer and writer.  He is a genuine lover of the silhouette arts.  He has had himself silhouetted several times over the years.  Recently,  famous silhouette artist Cindi Rose silhouetted Mr. Obama.  He has been silhouetted in different poses such as when he spoke at his campaign rally in Waterloo, Iowa as seen below.

 

Description : President Obama signaling a thumbs up to the American public during his days as he campaigned for president.

Description

The above portrait is on a blue background.  You can see Mr. Obama’s upper body including chest part, one hand, face, and head.  All of them are filled in with black color.

 

Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama is the current first lady of United States and the wife of Mr. Barack Obama.  She too has had herself silhouetted as you can see below.

 

Has these images inspired you in any way to learn the beautiful art of silhouetting?

Drawing a silhouette is very easy to learn the beginning stages which not require complex work.  To start, position any light source to the subject to cast shadow on the wall.  Now, you can use a soft pencil for the tracing work.  After tracing, you have to look out for stray marks and eliminate them, if there are any.  Then fill the black color in the tracing and perform the cutting work to complete your portrait.  It is not a tuff ask.  The only thing you need to take care of is your attention in tracing.  You need to be perfect in each department to be a fine silhouette artist.

General information for those new to Silhouette Art

Silhouettes are outlines of a person and filled in with black colour and then placed in a white background. This technique was invented by Etienne de Silhouette and hence the name, silhouette for this kind of art. Silhouette paper cutting art was developed in many countries and is available in many forms and styles. In Britain, the Silhouette portraits are called ‘shades’ or ‘profiles’ till the end of 18^th century. Silhouette is one of the rare forms of art and is practised by very less number of individuals now a day. A true silhouette is cut using a pair of specialised scissors which cuts smoothly the profiles face. This technique requires great skill and there are no courses available to learn this form of art.

August Edouart is one of the many famous artists on silhouette existed in the 18^th century. He is one of the most successful silhouettes artists of all times. He has cut thousands and thousands of portraits in duplicates. But majority of them were lost in a shipwreck. Among his various portraits, his subjects also include the French and British nobility and US presidents. John Miers is another silhouettes artist from Britain who was very famous during the 18^th century. Various miniatures of John Miers were produced on ivory or plaster and it also features very delicate shadings to show the detail of the hair and clothes. One of the leading silhouette artists in UK is Sarah Goddard. The American artist, Claudette wills introduces Sarah to his form of art.  Another popular silhouette artist still working today is Cindi Harwood Rose who has a wealth of information and portraits on her website.

The famous silhouette images includes the traditional silhouette image of Jane Austen, Beethoven as a boy, the mudflap girl, evolution, traffic signs, Cyprus, queen Victoria in tiles on the London underground and Statue of liberty.

Anyone can make their own silhouettes art piece for themselves by carefully following these instructions. First make your subject whom you wanted to make a silhouette to sit in a chair and let the shadow fall on the wall. Position the subject until the shadow of the profile looks pleasing for you. Now fix a large white sheet of paper on the wall and now position the subject so that there will be some place on the top as well as the bottom of the shadow in the picture. Inform your subject to sit still and not move. Now start drawing on the outline of the shadow very carefully by standing on one side so that your shadow does not interfere with your tracing. Once tracing is over, remove the paper from the wall and once tracing is over, remove the paper from the wall and erase all the unwanted marks using an eraser. Now fill the tracing with black pen or trace the shadow on to a black sheet of paper and cut it. Then paste it on a white background.

How did yours turn out?  Be sure to frame it and compare your work to that of a professional so you can compare.

The featured image is compliments of modern silhouette art pioneer Cindi H. Rose.

The evolution of photography has made this art die. But very few people practices in this silhouettes techniques and are trying to keep them alive. It is true that these artists will surely make silhouettes come back.

 

Silhouette Art – Development into modern culture

The silhouette art originated in Europe many years ago.  Silhouettists were used as an amusement for the higher-class people.  Many people were used to this hobby of cutting out paper profiles.  This form of art emerged as a power in early 1800’s.  Many European silhouettists became very popular by using this art of form as a source of employment for them.  It is one of the most collectable forms of art.  As now we know some history about this form of art, therefore, we can start to discuss about some famous silhouettes.

Famous Silhouettes

As you all know that there have been some very famous and interesting silhouettes in past.  Some of them are manufactured recently.  There are some enormously talented personalities involved with this art.  Some of them and their portraits will be discussed in this section.  For instance, let us take example of Mr. Al Jolson.  He was born on the 28^th day of May and died at the age of sixty-four years in United States of America.  He was a great actor and a very popular comedian.  He was one of the greatest and highly paid entertainers of all time in US.  Let us see one of his silhouette portraits:

 

Description

As you can see, the above image looks very exciting.  It is looking a bit funny and may be a bit scary as well.  The silhouette shown above has rectangular finished outer boundaries but it also has inner boundary, which looks to be spherical.  In the above image, his eyes, hands and some part of the image have white color filled in them and the rest part is filled in with black color.  There is also some information about the portrait at the bottom of the image.

Companies, business, and silhouettes

This form of art has developed to great heights in in the course of little time.  However, people were not showing a big amount of interest in this art in past some years but now the picture has changed.  Even highly reputed companies are using it as a medium to enhance their business.  The latest example is of Apple iPods.  Apple arranged a silhouette campaign and reports reveal that Apple has spent around $50 million on this campaign.  This campaign has proved to be a great success for the company and its business.  You can see one of the samples of a silhouette used for the promotion of an Apple iPod.

The above silhouette portrait shows a girl having an iPod in her hand and an earphone cable is connecting the girl’s ears to the iPod.  The profile of the girl is filled in with black color while the iPod and the earphone lead have white color filled in them.

 

Many celebrities and famous people such as Barack Obama have gotten their silhouette done, here is a gallery of famous silhouette art.