Sep 20, 2011 12:21 PM
Hoffritz brand scissors in hand, silhouette artist Deborah O’Connor reduces a profile to a mere line.
Her eyes start at the chest and move up the neck, around the chin. She cuts as she sees it, always freehand. Then the face—lips, nose, eyes, forehead—to the top of the back of the head. She stops, pulling her scissors from the double-sided, black-and-white silhouette paper and beginning again at the bottom, cutting up the back until the two lines meet.
“You have to have a certain amount of trust,” she said of silhouetting during a telephone interview last week. “You’re not looking at the paper. You’re looking at the person and letting your hand go.”
At 60, Ms. O’Connor is one of the few remaining of her kind, she said. There are fewer than a... more
Her eyes start at the chest and move up the neck, around the chin. She cuts as she sees it, always freehand. Then the face—lips, nose, eyes, forehead—to the top of the back of the head. She stops, pulling her scissors from the double-sided, black-and-white silhouette paper and beginning again at the bottom, cutting up the back until the two lines meet.
“You have to have a certain amount of trust,” she said of silhouetting during a telephone interview last week. “You’re not looking at the paper. You’re looking at the person and letting your hand go.”
At 60, Ms. O’Connor is one of the few remaining of her kind, she said. There are fewer than a... more
