Do you enjoy creating silhouette paintings? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
How to Paint A Watercolour Silhouette Painting (15 Minute Tutorial)
Watercolour silhouette paintings are unique and beautiful.
A silhouette is a solid shape that is completely dark and featureless, and it is usually contrasted against a light background.
In this way, these paintings tell a story, convey an emotion, or depict an atmosphere in ways that traditional paintings do not.
That’s why, in this article, I’m sharing with you a step-by-step watercolour silhouette tutorial to teach you:
- What is a silhouette and how to do create it
- How to paint an easy silhouette painting for beginners
- Useful watercolour tipsand techniques you will need to succeed
By the time you’re done reading, you’ll have the confidence to create these paintings with ease and accuracy.
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Table of Contents
What is Silhouette Art?
Silhouette art is created by painting a dark shape that contrasts against a usually light background. The goal is to create a solid shape that is instantly recognizable and identifiable to the viewer despite it not having intricate features or details.
As you can see, silhouettes are used in paintings to tell a story, communicate an emotion, or symbolize a metaphor.
Many artists enjoy creating silhouette artwork because it is easily recognizable and unique in its presentation.
For example, think of the dark shadows that are cast by trees, buildings, people, and other objects. Those shadows are silhouettes!
Materials You Will Need
Before you begin painting, you need to double check that you have all of the required art supplies:
- Watercolour paints (I’m using White Nights Watercolour Paints)
- Watercolour brushes (I’m using Silver Black Velvet Brushes)
- Watercolour paper (I’m using Arches Cold-Pressed Paper)
- Mixing palette (I’m using Meeden Porcelain Mixing Palette)
- Masking tape (I’m using Pro Artist Tape)
- Heat tool/gun (I’m using Mlife Mini Heat Gun)
- 2 jars of water
- Black ink (Optional: I’m using Speedball Black Ink)
- White ink (Optional: I’m using Winsor & Newton White Ink)
- Graphite pencil (I’m using Staedtler Mars Lumograph Pencils)
- Eraser (I’m using a Faber-Castell Kneaded Eraser)
Note: If you don’t have black or white ink, you can substitute those for black and white watercolours. I prefer using ink because it’s bolder, but the choice is up to you.
Once you have gathered all of the required materials, it’s time to start the tutorial to learn all about silhouette painting techniques.
Today, you’ll be painting a watercolour silhouette sunset with a dark tree contrasting against a beautiful twilight sky.
Before you begin, you can have a look at these watercolour silhouette paintings for inspiration.
Introduction to silhouette painting for beginners
We’re excited to release the second part of our Introduction to Silhouette and Paint offering. This course, which follows up on SIL102, consists of seven classes, with five 16 bit EXR sequences and four diverse and complex shots that explore various manual and procedural painting techniques and workflows. Both Silhouette 2021 and Mocha Pro 2021 are available on the fxphd so you can follow along with the course.
In this course, you will learn how to complete a paint task from start to finish – from shot approach to the finishing touches. Part 2 is taught using the newly released version of Silhouette, v2021.0.1 and the Mocha Pro plugin v8.0.3. These two industry-standard programs provide refined and in-depth tools that create the highest quality results for Visual Effects and Post Production work. Incorporating the Mocha Pro plugin into Silhouette workflows exemplifies how complimentary these two programs are.
SIL103 jumps right in with a multi-step painting, roto and compositing class that folds in a Mega Plate created in Mocha to serve as an oversize clean plate. A beauty paint shot follows, revealing two unique ways to paint frequency separation. Next up is a shot incorporating Mocha’s PowerMesh feature to facilitate an alternate method for paint patching. The course closes out with a task that teaches how to approach and accomplish a shot that benefits from both frame-by-frame paint animating and creative procedural processes.
An overall focus of this course is to combine hand painting and automated methods as it’s rare to complete a task with just one solution. Thanks to Damien Vergez of FastFokus for the beautiful footage used in this course.
Katie Morris is a VFX digital paint and roto artist, supervisor and consultant with extensive experience in the visual effects film industry. She has worked on over 82 visual effects feature films including Star Wars Episodes I, II, and III, all five Transformers films, Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow and most recently on season 2 of The Mandalorian. Katie has also collaborated on KMFX Scripts, a collection of Open Source custom scripts for Silhouette.
