While I was in the skatepark taking pictures of the benches, I noticed all the graffiti art that the skaters had left on the ramps.  Since graffiti has been a part of skateboarding for a long time, I thought it might be cool to try it to give some colour to the simplistic skating figures I was making at that time.  I was still working with the classic black and white silhouette but I was curious to see what colour might bring to it.  So, I drew up a figure, cut it out and went nuts for a few hours!

This was my first time ever using spray paint so this was fun to try out.  I may get back to this at some point.  I'd love to do these on a larger scale but for now i'll stick to the classic black and white silhouette.

I took the true silhouette approach to some of my life sized cut outs.  By this I mean I just used my eye and a scalpel.  There was no tracing, no drawing and no machines for these.  This was my first time trying this out so as a result, the proportions may be slightly off.  As well as this, I attempted the full skateboarding figure rather than just the head and shoulders.  Here are a couple.

 
I soon became interested in the spaces between the figures.  So I started hanging them up beside each other.

I began to really like this idea of putting them together, so I decided to take all the life sized silhouettes that I had done up to date and hang them up together on the same wall.

This proved to be difficult as there was much competition for wall space within the college and so the amount of space that I needed was scarce.

So I came up with an alternative solution.  I brought them home and hung them up on the wall of my garage.  Here they are.

I rearranged the order of the figures 5 times to see how they would look.  However since I had to do this outside I encountered a few problems.

Since these are life sized, they would not fit into any folders and I didn't want to fold them as they would get damaged.  So I had to carry them home in the wind and rain. Not fun!!

Since they are only paper cut outs, many of them didn't stand a chance against the weather so many of them got torn and damaged.

With each silhouette shown here, I remade at least 4 times if not more as they were constantly getting damaged.  Even here, you can make out the crumpled up marks left over from the weather and from being kept in my studio.  Sadly this was out of my control.  Still, I'm happy it worked out!

Auguste Edouart is interesting to look at because not only is he a "true silhouette artist" like Lauren Muney and Karl Johnson but he came from the time when this almost extinct art form was hugely popular.  He was one of the many portrait artists from the time who travelled around from town to town and from country to country in search for clients.  Edouart lived from 1789 to 1861 and became very popular within that period.  He's done some landscape pictures aswell using watercolours, however he's mostly known for his silhouette portraits. Particularly his profiles of eminent Americans.  Here is some of his work.

Auguste Edouart is mostly known in France, England and the USA.  He's dead over 150 years but his work is still appreciated.

Lauren Muney has been a professional artist, entertainer, producer and consultant for the last 30 years.  She cuts her silhouette portraits within a few minutes by hand and scissors (no tracing, drawing or machines) at historical festivals while dressed in the clothes of the 18th and 19th centuries.  She's currently based in Baltimore, USA.  Here are some of her portraits.

Another true silhouette artist who interested me is Karl Johnson who can't see through his left eye. As a result he's forced to judge the shape and distance of something by their shadow.  This gives him the ability to capture a persons outline with uncanny accuracy.  He's now living in Southern California, USA.  Here's some of his work.

He has also done many celebrities silhouettes such as Jennifer Garner, Reese Witherspoon, Oprah, Hilary Duff and Lindsey Lohan.

Although there are many artists in the world who deal with the profile of a person, not all of them do it using paper.  There are many profile artists who use shadows.  Same idea with a different approach.  One of these artists is Christian Boltanski.  He's a sculptor, photographer, film maker and a self taught painter.  He reconstructs past events like the mass murder of jews in the concentration camps.  He's mostly known for his assemblages (a series of shadows casted all over the walls).  This is a strange but cool approach to making profiles in my opinion and this is why I was drawn to his work.  Here are some of his shadow assemblages.

For the same reason I was interested in Christian Boltanski, I also admire Tim Noble and Sue Webster.  These two are both doctors in art and they create profiles of themselves and famous celebrities using everyday objects such as rubbish to cast shadows by light onto the walls.  What they do is very unique and quite impressive.  Here are some of their works.