I’ve spent a good part of my professional life hand-tinting photographs with a variety of paints, dyes, pastels, Photoshop etc. (There’s 30 years I won’t get back.) I recently signed up for a youtube channel and have posted three handtinting how-to videos. Click here for a link to the first How-to Handtinting with Oils 101. The second video is specifically about tinting photo canvases with Marshal oils. At the end I include a time lapse portion, tinting a large canvas of a dead great white shark – guts and all – for a client to hang in a seafood / espresso shop down at the docks. Click here for that second video. UPDATE 04-07-20: I added a third video regarding the use of oil pencils AND a simple and easy replacement for the discontinued Marshall’s PM Solution.
Here are some samples of photos I’ve colorized by various means:
Click on any image for a larger view:
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Infrared photo, fiber base silver print. Photo oils.
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Fiber base silver print, hand colored with oils.
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Infrared image. Fiber base silver print. Hand colored with pastels.
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Infrared photo, fiber base silver print. Photo oils.
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Rocket Camera photo. Fiber base silver print. Hand colored with photo oils.
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Infrared image. Hand tinted negative with dyes.
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Infrared image. Hand tinted negative with dyes.
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Fiber base silver print. Hand tinted with photo oils.
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This is a Pintoid (created using a pinhole camera made from an Altoids container). It is tinted using photo dyes.
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This is a Pintoid (created using a pinhole camera made from an Altoids container). It is tinted using photo dyes.
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This is a Pintoid (created using a pinhole camera made from an Altoids container). It is tinted using photo dyes.
This isn’t general knowledge, but I used to handtint black and white photos for magazine covers. It was a lot of fun. I recently came across some of the covers and thought I’d share.
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This was the very first cover I tinted.
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Ha! Fun times.
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The black and white original.
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The tinted image.
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Imagine my chagrin upon receiving this.
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But I made it through! I persevered! I tinted every single detail in this image. AND .. I did it with Photoshop. I ain’t no techinal dummy when it comes to software. The client simply needed an electronic file. That’s a lot of layers there.
Here’s another thing I do. I do restorations.
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The original restored black and white. It was about 3″x5″.
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The final canvas print is 18″x24″ and hand tinted with oils.
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My mom – circa 1932. This was from a little, tiny , torn b&w photo.
Well, there you have it. My dog hangs out in the studio and doesn’t seem to mind the smell of oil paints. He’s a good sport.
