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Caricaturist to Silhouettist (and back again) (view source)
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==Article Transcript==
Portraits with intense likenesses have always fascinated
me, so when I fell into the amazing world of caricature
twenty years ago, I’d found my professional calling
([https://www.instagram.com/emartiste/ #caricaturesbyemily]). As a self-taught caricaturist
(way back before the time of internet tutorials and videos) my
incessant practice sketching of family and friends included
front and 3/4 views only. That’s what I’d been exposed to from
the exactly one caricature artist I’d seen at an art festival.
There was no inkling for me that a fine
tradition of profile caricatures also existed.
Later, once I’d experienced the sheer
onslaught of my first ISCA (then NCN)
convention in 2003, I admired the work of
a few devotees to the side-view caricature,
but it was sadly almost out-of-fashion (sorry,
Tad!) by then, and everyone was doing
full-face work.
Eleven years later, the profile caricature
reappeared in a different guise: two master
silhouette artists with sharp scissors and
even sharper wits turned up at various
caricature conventions and completely inspired
me. In 2014, I attended the DrawInn
Vlagtwedde convention in the Netherlands,
hosted by ISCA member [[Johanna Veerenhuis]]
(see her article in this issue), which was attended by some of the best caricaturists
in Europe… including [http://www.jeanetartapart.nl Jeanet Willems], master
silhouettist who
proceeded to cut hilarious linear caricatures
of everyone with her gigantic shears.
Then at the annual ISCA convention later
that year, Mongolian artist
Turburam Sandagdorj came and shocked
us all with his intricately detailed likenesses
cut by a tiny pair of nail scissors.
My first silhouette attempts were made at
home after seeing these two pros in action.
I had the observational skills already, from
my many years of live drawing. However,
I still had many aspects to learn: mainly,
accuracy in translating what I saw to what I
cut, and to be able to cut them rapidly and uniformly in size.
Research was also needed, to learn about
various things: the history of silhouettes,
