11 ASSESS ING THE SIL HOUETTE

When I’m planning a painting I think about how the image will look as a silhouette. Compositionally, the silhouette is the outer edge of the main forms of the foreground objects or figures. If it works in black and white as a composition then there’s a good chance that the composition should work fine in colour, if you don’t mess around with the colour values too much. I also make sure that the silhouette is interesting and background elements don’t compete with it.