Shades of gray,black and white I

I am once again in love with Black and white...and shades of GRAY!

Victorian age swap - false daguerreotype and newly photo-manipulated photo
Depicted: Aime Millet
(1819-1891)
Millet was famous in France for his monumental sculptures. His portrait here - placed in front of one of them and aged and embellished digitally - is from an original still amazingly clear studio shot by Felix Nadar c. 1856.

Base Textures, albeit modified ,courtesy of Shadowhouse Creations/aka Skeletalmess

I have used Jerry Jones' wonderfully evocative digital textures as an enhancement to more than a few of my images since I first discovered him as FLICKRS' skeletalmess...he remains one of the most generous-minded and open community spirited artists online.

The "False daguerreotype"beside it is made as follows:

Dissolve 2 Tbs of bar soap shavings into 1/4 cup of hot water
Let cool.
Add 1 Tbs turpentine / Mix well

Print out a b/w image from your inkjet computer onto regular copy paper ( My b/w is the same image as shown in it's digitally coloured version here )
My printer is an Epson pigment-based one, I"m assuming a dye-based printer would work as well-

Paint over the picture, count to ten ,then turn onto bond or water-colour paper
Burnish well with spoon about 1/2 minute....lift it off and check it out!!

Photo Painting Exercise

Hand-Colouring Home Printer Photos HOW-TO:

I printed  out my own black-and-white photos to colour with Epson Durabrite inks on Epson Glossy Photo paper.....just de-saturate your coloured ones to turn them into black and white..

The pens and inks I used to hand colour were rated permanent, smudge and bleed-proof....and were they ever! ( Faber-Castell Pitt artist pens- use the brush tipped ones - and  Staedtler Lumocolor pens , Pioneer Gel pens )

The TWO most important things I learned from doing these was:

1.    DO NOT  use pens DIRECTLY on  Glossy Photo paper.....it looks awful, frankly.......covers all the shadows and gradations of tone up!

The exception is gel pens, which add nice highlights here and there ( see car chrome and cat's whiskers )

2.     Instead USE a damp -not wet - flat sable brush to transfer inks from the tips of your pens TO the paper surface

EASY , no?

I  have uploaded both the experimental first  WIP set and the final work to compare and see the real difference those TWO little easy steps make !