Whenever I feel I've exhausted all the artistic avenues silhouette cutting has to offer, some new challenge always opens itself up to me. A week or so ago I was asked to cut a single silhouette, the challenge being that the silhouette was to be cut on the radio - during 'Tony Blackburn's Weekend Warmup' on BBC Radio Berkshire. The idea was to cut the silhouette while the presenter interviewed me at the same time, trying to create a picture in the listener's mind as to what was going on. In the end the silhouette turned out not one of my best, but - I ask myself - did it really matter? The interview led to a write-up about my work on the BBC website which you can read here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-23095541
A completely different challenge was set recently by a client in Germany who required each of 250 delegates to receive a silhouette, cut from their own corporate-blue paper, during a conference dinner. My initial proposal - based on tried-and-tested advice to allow two minutes per person - was that they would need to book four artists. The reply came back that they had the budget to book two, Mike and myself, on the understanding that everybody would still receive a silhouette…
What to do? Arguably the sensible option would have been to turn the booking down on the grounds that this simply wasn't possible, however Mike & I instead decided to re-visit our ideas on 'speed cutting' to see if we could double our output of silhouettes.
Speed cutting has a long tradition amongst silhouette artists, with the '60-second sitting' a prominent feature of silhouettists' advertising ever since the 1830's. The artists of the 1920's were fond of holding competitions to see who could cut a recognisable profile in the fastest possible time. Output, however, is not just about speed; our standard two-minute interval is based on 50-90 seconds to cut the silhouette + another 60 seconds or so 'pause' between each one. This pause is not a break, but the time needed to mount the silhouette on card, hold it up for all to see, deal with a number of comments & general 'chat-chat', and finally to find & pose the next subject. Herein lay the problem, whilst we could conceivably cut a bit faster, how could we reduce this 'pause' to the level needed to actually produce one silhouette every minute?
In the end the client provided part of the solution: the silhouettes were to be mounted directly into the delegates' conference packs under the heading 'Author's Profile' (related to the theme of the conference) meaning we could give out unmounted silhouettes for delegates to stick in themselves. The client also agreed to announce our presence in advance, so everyone knew we were working against the clock, which made it easier to quickly find each subject. The 'pause' was thus reduced to 20 seconds or so, leaving us just 40 seconds to cut the silhouette. This we achieved by dispensing with superfluous detail and concentrating on a single-line cutting technique, with none of the usual extra cuts to show ties, glasses and curls of hair.
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Some of the 40-second, single-line silhouettes cut at a recent conference in Heidenheim, Germany
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At the event Mike and I each broke our own speed records, and between us cut just over 220 profiles in two hours flat. Half the delegates consisted of balding middle-aged men, which helped considerably - nice simple shapes! After finishing the remaining few delegates at a more leisurely pace we even had time to sit down and enjoy a meal before the event finished. The lesson I learned is that one shouldn't be too prescriptive about the number of silhouettes one artist can actually cut; with adequate preparation - and some co-operation from the client - this time is far more elastic than I used to think.
