Paper and scissor

We ran into the children's book store and were sent to the back. The young woman had a chair up against a wall and a chair for herself a few feet away. Craig and I wondered how she would do it. Would she flash a big light and trace around their heads?

Our daughter balked at going first so one of our sons jumped on the chair. He faced us and this woman who looked to be 27 years old studied his profile. Then she started to cut a small square of black paper. As the pieces fell, our son's profile appeared. She just looked at him and cut.

Our daughter got up next and played a three-year-old's variation of "I Spy" with us to keep her sitting in profile. The artist told us she liked the challenge of cutting out curly hair. Then our other son jump on the chair and sat patiently as she cut out his profile.

She cut out three portraits of our children in less than 15 minutes.

From Wikipedia -

A silhouette is a profile traced onto and then cut from black paper and was a simple alternative for people who could not afford other forms of portraiture, which, in the eighteenth century, was still an expensive proposition. The word took its name from Étienne de Silhouette, either because the victims of his taxes complained that they were reduced to mere shadows or because he enjoyed this fad art in his retirement.