OVER THE FIRST FEW WEEKS of lockdown I conducted a series of online experiments. I began by creating a Facebook event and inviting friends to an evening of silhouette cutting. This was followed by my post Can a Silhouettist work from home? This led to a couple of short online events, cutting silhouettes for teams of online workers. They were all working from home and their team leader wanted to hold a relaxed social evening to boost morale.
but can you spot the one posing for a silhouette?
It turned into the highlight of the day. These things need an element of fun in there – having the silhouette cutting was inspired and really made the day”
The corporate events led to a variety of requests to cut more more people online. So far, I’ve tried cutting silhouettes on Zoom, Hangouts, Skype, Insta-Live and WebEx.
The best of these by far is Zoom, as it allows me to “pin” each participant to my screen irrespective of whether they are speaking or not. On some platforms the person posing needs to keep talking, since every time they stop the spotlighted video moves to somebody else! This is just one of the many technical challenges involved in working this way. For me, Zoom silhouettes are clearly the way forward!
Online media appearances
I recently made an appearance on Twitch, cutting a number of silhouettes (including James Acaster) on Stuart Goldsmiths “Infinite Sofa”. Stuart, like me, began he career as a Covent-Garden street artist.
It was probably one of my most chaotic media appearances ever! You can watch the whole program here if you wish, but it is quite long. My main appearance is quite early and I cut James’ silhouette right at the end.
I hope very much you will reinvent yourself very successfully given these strange times we now live in by continuing to use your gift of silhouetting and giving much pleasure to everyone.
I look forward to following your tips on getting good profiles of the family and get back to you once I have done them all.
Do you:
1) offer a discount for single silhouettes of various members of my family as I will need to get 12 silhouettes done to complete a much longed-for gift to my parents but will be unaffordable for me.
2) Additionally would you do it larger so that it is nearer A4.
Many thanks again and kind regards
Tara
Thanks Tara. I’ll respond more specifically by email, but regarding the size this is no problem. Whether working face to face or over Zoom I can easily adjust the size of the silhouettes to suit particular frame sizes. I don’t change any extra for this, I just need to know the size of the “window” (card mount or frame size) in which the silhouette will sit.