While the art of cutting silhouettes is all but a lost one because photography is so easy and shows all the details, still you can make them with some black glazed paper and a pair of sharp shears with a little practice.
Take a sheet of black glazed paper[42] about 2 inches wide and 3 inches long and seat your sitter with the side of his or her face turned toward you. Now with a pair of sharp shears begin to cut the paper, starting at the chin and going on up the face to the hair, then around to the back of the head and finally cutting out the collar and bust.
[42] Glazed paper can be bought at stationery stores or you can get it from Dennison Mfg. Co., 5th Ave. and 26th St., N. Y. C.
All the time you are cutting you must keep your artistic eye on the profile of your sitter and your mechanical eye on your shears and paper and you will be truly surprised to find how little knack it takes to get a reasonably faithful likeness. A pair of silhouettes are shown in [Fig. 54].
Transfer Pictures, or Decalcomania.
—Of course you know what transfer pictures are. There are very few boys indeed who have not bought and used little 5 cent packages of jim-crow transfer pictures and you will remember that usually only about half of the picture transferred came off. But this was because they were made for fun and not for real work.
Now transfer pictures, or decalcomania (pronounced de-cal´-co-ma´-ni-a) or decalcomanie as the French call it, from the Latin de which means down, plus calquer, which is Latin for trace, plus mania which is Greek for madness, are used by hundreds of thousands by painters and decorators in every line of work. These pictures are made with skill and care and when used properly will not break or come off.
These transfer pictures can be bought in 10,000 different subjects and cost from 1¹⁄₂ cents to a couple of dollars each. The pictures include every subject imaginable from simple little flowers to birds with wonderful plumage and from cupids in groups to world’s fair buildings; then there are letters and monograms and beautiful crests and coats-of-arms in gold and brilliant colors.
When you get ready to do decalcomanie write to Palm, Fechteler and Company, 67 Fifth Avenue, New York, or to their western branch at 54 West Lake Street, Chicago, Ills., for a price-list and this will give you a description, the height and length of each picture, the number of pictures on a sheet and the price per sheet.