Hand Tinting: How did he do this?

Jersey Vic · Mar 23, 2007

What were people using to do this in the 40's-50's..I've seen similar work from India and doubt they have Marshall's kits. Thanks

http://www.folkartmuseum.org/afam_slide.asp?id=1775&root=520

Roger Hicks · Mar 23, 2007

Jersey Vic said:
What were people using to do this in the 40's-50's..I've seen similar work from India and doubt they have Marshall's kits. Thanks

http://www.folkartmuseum.org/afam_slide.asp?id=1775&root=520

Couldn't make the link work but Marshall's have been around for 100 years or more and there used to be many more manufacturers of hand colouring material, including transparent oils. Hand colouring used to be very popular in India and still retains a following today.

My wife Frances Schultz has demonstrated hand colouring for major manufacturers/distributors (Marshall's, SpotPen, Tetenal) at major shows (photokina, Focus on Imaging) and says you can use virtually anything: food-dyes, water colours, coloured pencils... There are examples of her work if you go to Galleries from the home page of www.rogerandfrances.com.

Cheers,

R.

plummerl · Mar 23, 2007

Try this link:

http://www.folkartmuseum.org/images/afam_1775.jpg

larry

Akki14 · Mar 23, 2007

Oh i have a similar print my great aunt coloured in. I think they did have various tinting paints/pencils/etc back then... but then again it wasn't unheard of for my aunt to paint with the usual sort of oils/acrylics/watercolours. Takes a very steady hand, I'm sure.

Roger Hicks · Mar 23, 2007

plummerl said:
Try this link:

http://www.folkartmuseum.org/images/afam_1775.jpg

larry

Dear Larry,

Thanks -- I think.

Professional opinion from Frances: "This is the kind of thing that got hand colouring a bad name. It reminds me of the fellow who proudly proclaims that he always applies his Marshalls Oils with tampons -- though I think this antedates the invention of tampons. Probably Marshalls Oils or something similar, possibly applied with a lump hammer. At best, his cotton ball had a BIG, ACTIVE boll weevil in it; the Alabamian Killer Boll Weevil is a likely candidate, especially if the weevil in question disputed the hand-colorist's view of things. As well he might. The print was pre-treated with some sort of liquid (Marlene, possibly) that has smeared the colours."

Cheers,

R.

Roger Hicks · Mar 23, 2007

Akki14 said:
Takes a very steady hand, I'm sure.

Quote from Frances again:

"Nope, actually it doesn't. I have a 'benign essential tremor' (medicalese for 'shaky hands, but don't worry, it's not really all that serious, even if you do spill your coffee from time to time'). All you need is an eye for colour and a surprisingly small amount of self confidence. The person who coloured that print had too much, though."

Do take a look at Frances's work...

Cheers,

R.

Monophoto · Mar 23, 2007

plummerl said:
Try this link:

http://www.folkartmuseum.org/images/afam_1775.jpg

larry

Agree strongly with Roger - this is a really bad example of hand coloring!

I still hand color prints occasionally. There is nothing quite as elegant as a print with a subtle application of color. I tend to use pencils more frequently than oils because they are far easier to use - both to apply and also those tiny lead tubes of oil colors are a PITA to reopen after they have been closed for a month or so. And while you have to limit yourself to 'transparent' oils (mainly Marshall's), you can use just about any colored pencil.

plummerl · Mar 24, 2007

Wow! Sorry for correcting the link to the photograph. Here is the annotation for the photograph:
====================================
PORTRAIT OF MARIE IN SWEATER AND PEARLS

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (19101983)
Milwaukee
c. 1940s
Hand-tinted gelatin silver print
10 x 8 in.

American Folk Art Museum, gift of Lewis and Jean Greenblatt, 2000.1.17

Photo by John Parnell, New York
====================================

Perhaps next time you could take 30 seconds and try and understand what Folk Art is all about.

Jeez!
larry

copake_ham · Mar 24, 2007

plummerl said:
Wow! Sorry for correcting the link to the photograph. Here is the annotation for the photograph:
====================================
PORTRAIT OF MARIE IN SWEATER AND PEARLS

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (19101983)
Milwaukee
c. 1940s
Hand-tinted gelatin silver print
10 x 8 in.

American Folk Art Museum, gift of Lewis and Jean Greenblatt, 2000.1.17

Photo by John Parnell, New York
====================================

Perhaps next time you could take 30 seconds and try and understand what Folk Art is all about.

Jeez!
larry

larry,

There are some on this site who are clearly practitioners of the "let no good deed go unpunished" school of courtesy.

You ran into a couple of them.

Thanks for your posts and attempts to help out.

Roger Hicks · Mar 24, 2007

plummerl said:
Perhaps next time you could take 30 seconds and try and understand what Folk Art is all about.

Jeez!
larry

Dear Larry,

Well, the question was, 'how did he do it?'.

The answer was 'Marshalls oils or something very similar'

And why does folk art have to be incompetent? My wife belong to a sewing circle. One of her friends is a Ukrainian in her 70s who does traditional Ukrainian embrodery -- stunningly well. If that isn't folk art, what is?

I've seen folk art in many, many countries: it's something that intrigues me, not least because it is often very stylized and formalized. It may sometimes appear crude, but often that's just a part of the style. Wood carvings in Slovakia spring to mind.

This wasn't crude or stylized. In fact, I dispute that it was folk art. It was an incompetent example of a known skill -- the artistic equivalent of the home mechanic who has a few nuts and bolts left over when he has finished the engine rebuild, and hopes it won't matter.

Cheers,

R.

donbga · Mar 24, 2007

Jersey Vic said:
How did he do this?

Very poorly, I think. I'm with Roger on this one.

plummerl · Mar 24, 2007

Roger Hicks said:
..
..

This wasn't crude or stylized. In fact, I dispute that it was folk art. It was an incompetent example of a known skill -- the artistic equivalent of the home mechanic who has a few nuts and bolts left over when he has finished the engine rebuild, and hopes it won't matter.

Cheers,

R.

Dear Roger,

Did anyone actually try and find out who Eugene Von Bruenchenhein was? Amazing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Von_Bruenchenhein

Dead Link Removed

Given the number of collections that he is represented in (New York, Atlanta, Houston, Smithsonian, etc.), your dispute would seem to be disputed.

larry

Roger Hicks · Mar 24, 2007

Dear Larry,

Why would anyone bother to try, on the evidence of that picture? I don't find that amazing at all.

Plaudits do not make him any more competent, nor do they affect how the photograph was coloured, namely, Marshalls Oils or similar. They leave the door open to his being deliberately or ironically incompetent, i.e. parodying incompetence, but as it stands, I think I'll go for the first-approximation view that he WAS incompetent as a hand colorist.

Frances has been hand-colouring today. As she said, "If I make mistakes, I'll just call it folk art."

"Outsider artist"? Fine. At the risk of sounding like Hitler (with his views on 'degenerate Jewish art'), on the evidence of the original image, he can stay outside as far as I am concerned. The work shown in the second link is a good deal more interesting, but even a genius produces rubbish sometimes.

I am reminded of the time I turned on the wireless and heard an unfamiliar piece of music. "Sounds like Beethoven was short of money and took a quick-and-dirty commission," I said to my wife. When it finished it turned to be a very minor Beethoven piece commissioned for someone's wife's birthday... Still a lot more competent than the hand colouring, though.

Cheers,

R.

Bob F. · Mar 24, 2007

Surely the fact that his guy was a recognised artist means that this is not folk-art? Folk-art is surely "art of the people"? My understanding of the term is that it is the indigenous art and craft of a region or people, produced by ordinary people and artisans without artistic pretension.

You could argue for the artistic merits of this image and suggest that it predates Warhol by several decades, perhaps... but folk-art it is not.

These days, you might want to look at coloured marker pens as an option.

Cheers, Bob.

Troy · Mar 24, 2007

plummerl said:
Dear Roger,

Did anyone actually try and find out who Eugene Von Bruenchenhein was? Amazing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Von_Bruenchenhein

Dead Link Removed

Given the number of collections that he is represented in (New York, Atlanta, Houston, Smithsonian, etc.), your dispute would seem to be disputed.

larry

Thanks for the links. I like his story and his art. Breaking "rules" is what great art is frequently about. I guess he's still an outsider artist. He'd probably be pleased.

For what it's worth, I like using old color photo retouching dyes. They don't sit on the surface of the print like oils. Rather, they penetrate the emultion and become part of the print. But dyes are harder to work with as there's no good way to correct a mistake.

Best,
TROY.

pentaxuser · Mar 24, 2007

It is certainly very garish and maybe has a certain short lived fascination because of it. It's rather like the effect of suddenly seeing a woman in real life who has applied make-up in the same way. If it was done deliberately for effect then it has worked.

The best piece of hand colouring portraiture I have seen in a book is a picture of F Schultz's father. I presume her work. Even with book reproduction, it has to be looked at very closely to distinguish it from colour print reproductions as they used to appear in non glossy books. However it is colour reproduction with something added.There's a gently pastel look about the best of hand coloured prints that I have seen some others manage as well.

I am sorely afraid that such skills are not intrinsically bound up with photographic skills per se. E Chambre Hardman, a well know photographer in Liverpool from the 1920s to the 60s, used to send out his B&W work to "tinters" to the 4 corners of Liverpool who were highly valued by him but who had no photographic skills whatsoever. They were either exclusively or certainly mostly unskilled( in the formal craft sense of the word) women rather than men working from home with very basic equipment who simply "had the knack". OK like Gary Player the more you practice the luckier you get in getting it right but in my opinion those producing top class work have a talent that most of us will not match, no matter how much practice we get.

Vic. If you ever make it to the U.K. try to visit his studios in Liverpool to see how his business operated including hand coloured prints. The public get guided tours.

pentaxuser

Roger Hicks · Mar 24, 2007

pentaxuser said:
The best piece of hand colouring portraiture I have seen in a book is a picture of F Schultz's father. I presume her work.

Yes it was. Thanks for the kind words.

Cheers,

R.

Jersey Vic · Mar 24, 2007

I believe I was more concerned with how Von Bruenchenhein did this as opposed to why but I do find it far more interesting than the subtlely toned B&W images of little children dressed like courting adults in which one is holding a pink colored rose that profilerate the world of greeting cards.

That being said, Frances work is beautiful yet edgy as well. In fact, I'd say the image of the nelapese or tibetan man is almost there in terms of vividness of color but it's so much more refined and accomplished that it's hard to compare.

Insofar as Von Bruenchenhein is concerned, I think he'd be smiling that he's even being discussed on the internet in 2007. He didn't set out to be popular or marketable or even good, he simply made things for his own pleasure or just because he had to. I applaud that.

Hand Tinting: How did he do this?

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