How to draw silhouettes: basics, tricks and step-by-step lesson

What is a silhouette and why is it important?

Imagine you went on a photo hunt like Sharik from Prostokvashino. You are sitting in the bushes and watching that meadow in the distance. All the animals that come into the frame of your lens will have individual outlines. You will always distinguish a deer from a wolf, and a wolf from a goose. And this is the merit of the silhouette. The silhouette is the foundation for an artist. It creates a clear and recognizable image that conveys the character of the object through its outlines. Today we will look at how to create silhouettes that speak louder than words. Without too much noise, just lines, shapes and a little magic.

Why is the silhouette the superhero among artistic techniques?

1. It immediately tells you who your character is

The silhouette has individual features inherent in certain objects, animals, objects and architecture. An apple is easy to distinguish from a pear thanks to its outline, and a teapot from a mug, just as a woman can be distinguished from a man. And if you give your silhouette additional details, then from a simple human figure you can make a berserker with two axes, an image of a druid or a fencer with a saber, as in Even Amundsen's sketch. We highlighted the character's contour in blue for наглядности. Try to mentally create a similar effect with objects in reality.

2. Shows character and dynamics even without details

It is not always necessary to model the shape with details to understand what or who is in front of us. Let's try to reduce the readability of our character's lines by half and abandon them altogether, leaving only the silhouette. In both cases, the character of the person is visible, his positive attitude, energetic posture, readiness for action. And also on the diagram we showed the plasticity of the body, which is preserved in both cases under the layers of the tinsel of clothes and decor.

3. Allows you to quickly outline ideas and not get confused in the little things

You always want to draw textures, folds on clothes, and little things hanging on our hero. But you can get lost in the nuances and forget about the main thing - the recognizability of the image. Therefore, a uniformly colored silhouette is the best and fastest way to visualize a pure idea. First create the base, and then populate it with additions.

How silhouettes help in the artist's work

It may seem that this is a waste of time, and you need to start as quickly as possible with complex detailing and rendering. However, drawing silhouettes gives a lot in the early stages and will save you from mistakes and failed decisions. And it will reward you with experience in composition techniques, coloristics, and also allow you to practice and learn to draw more complex things more confidently. Now let's talk about the areas where silhouettes are irreplaceable:

1. In character design:

We have collected several silhouetted sketches by Jama Juraev on one picture. No matter what kind of character you have (a real person, a fragment of an object or an invented beast), silhouettes allow you to play with shape and look for a unique memorable look for any creature. Protrusions, recesses in the contours, smooth turns or pointed bends, combinations of small and large spots create a certain character and emotion. Look at the Templar on horseback. You immediately feel the heaviness and fatigue, imagine the armor of the rider and the horse's equipment. It seems like indistinct spots, but we already have a whole picture in our heads: a wide wasteland with rocks, a tired warrior and a heavy accumulation of clouds on top.

Main techniques for creating silhouettes

Now let's talk a little about small life hacks that help to draw absolutely different things. If you combine all three tricks together, you will become a drawing guru!

1. External silhouette

Always remember that there are external outlines of the shape. The outer silhouette conveys an understanding of the essence of the character. Do you want it to be more evil and vindictive, add sharpness in the silhouette and broken lines. More bloodthirsty and fierce - increase the massiveness of the contour, add arcs and angles. And remember about proportions and plasticity. We all consist of parts, the ratio of them to each other and their location (inclinations and turns of the body and limbs) add temperament to the drawing. For example, if we make a large head and a small body with limbs, we will get a cute and funny hero.

What tools to draw silhouettes

In fact, you can draw silhouettes even with your fingers, but there is one big BUT, everything in order. Both traditional artists and digital ones use silhouettes. For drawing in our usual reality, it is best to choose tools with a wide imprint. Thin pens, liners, automatic pencils are useless for this process, because the silhouette is best filled with tone. Therefore, we advise you to use:

1. Wide brushes of any texture. Such a brush can draw both widely with the whole body and thinly with the very tip of the pile. This is in case you suddenly need to add little things.
2. Markers and thick graphite rods or crayons of soft material (charcoal, pastel, sanguine, sauce). There are markers with thick nozzles that are convenient for making fills. And the rods are even as wide as a finger and are similar in principle to brushes: the cut draws widely, and the edge draws thinly. Moreover, their prints are very textured and can imitate the material qualities of objects. For example, wood, the roughness of stone or the wrinkled fabric.
3. Stencil. For this you will need paper, a knife and scissors. A silhouette is cut out in the paper, and then it is placed on a clean sheet and rolled with a roller. You can also use wide brushes and soft materials. This is a longer way, but it is distinguished by its special effectiveness.

In the digital world, the following will be most convenient:

1. Brushes also large in size. You can choose a simple round or textured one. The main thing is not to go into details, but to set a large mass to the object or character. The irregularities of the print of textured brushes can also be used to convey the material.
2. Lasso. In the digital world, the lasso resembles a knife or scissors. It is easy to select the desired areas and fill them with tone. The lasso can create not only large forms, but also add small elements if necessary.

Gradients. Filling the silhouette with traditional tools and digital ones can become more interesting if you use gradient transitions. With their help, you can convey a pseudo-volume, that is, a slight hint. For example, characters are made darker towards the bottom and lighter towards the top, so a quick feeling of the character's illumination and its placement on the surface is achieved. And if we use tonal stretches from light to dark in the elements of the landscape, we can create the illusion of depth of space.

Step-by-step lesson: Drawing a character's silhouette

Step 1: Geometry basis

Who do you think we will draw today: maybe an apple, maybe a puppy, maybe a knight? But no, we will draw Fenik the warrior fox. First, let's look for a silhouette from simple geometric shapes. Since our fox is a fighting one, and also cunning, triangular shapes will suit her very well. They have sharp corners that will emphasize the character of our hero. He will stand with a sword and in a cloak, so at first we will have to set an external general silhouette, and then move on to the internal one (1). Yellow triangles denote the head, ears, limbs, sword. And the red area is the cloak, inside it the hatching is the предполагаемое place for the body (2).

Step 2: Clarification

Let's arm ourselves with an eraser or lasso and start removing the extra pieces of gray tone to clearly outline the shape of the muzzle, we will mark the tail on the right, paws and cloak (3). From a distance it looks convincing, the silhouette of a fabulous fighter is already guessed, but we can add more details to make the figure more graceful (4). On the small diagram, the sides that were touched by the clarifications were marked in pink.

Step 3: Line

Now let's add a light line without much detail to check our silhouette for accuracy (5). But first, we will lower the transparency of the layer with the silhouette so that it is easier for us to see the lines on the gray tone. The left paw turned out to be a bit short, in some places you need to add small reliefs of folds on clothes and body. Let's draw the protruding sheath, and also curl the pigtail on the back of the head playfully. Let a weightless butterfly sit on the tip of the sword, and our character look at her. Let's finalize our sketch with detailing and shading, clarify the location of the mouth, eyes, nose and emotions (6).

Step 4: Internal silhouette

With the same fills with a hard brush without soft pressure or with the help of a lasso, we fill in the silhouettes. First, let's highlight Fenik together with clothes and attributes with a slightly lighter gray (7). Then we fill the belt with the darkest gray, slightly lighter gray than the belt, we fill the gloves, and the lightest gray tone is given to the shirt (8).

Step 5: Gradient

We shade the scabbard and fibula with medium gray. All the details have different tones, which makes the internal silhouette easily recognizable and all the important accents are preserved. Below we have compiled a tone gradation. Check that the tones on your sheets also smoothly flow into each other and do not match. And we will mark the highlight on the eye and on the sword (9) with white. The final touch is the gradient. To do this, we create a new layer and define it in the "Clipping Mask" mode, set the blending mode to "Multiply". We select the "Gradient" tool and then darken Fenek downward. In this simple way, we created a light volume for the entire figure, it seems as if it is illuminated from above. And that's it for our tutorial. As you can see, you can start not with drawing a line, but with creating a silhouette, inside which we will see the image and movement of the character. Lifehack (11): If you want to add magic, try an internal silhouette inside an internal silhouette: add a pattern on the inside of the cloak using "Clipping Mask" and the "Multiply" blending mode. Or you can make the fibula glow in white through the layer blending mode "Overlay". After that, your imagination is not limited, try and add new inputs! Silhouette is your best friend at the initial stage. It is simple but powerful. It helps to place accents, understand the shape and tell a story without words. Experiment, add details and look for your style. And most importantly, enjoy the process!