ABSTRACT
264The practice of hand painting photographs has been around since the beginning of photography. When daguerreotype studios first emerged in the 1800s people flocked to have realistic photographic portraits made of themselves and their loved ones. This put many portrait painters out of business, but just for a short time. Though daguerreotypes were immensely popular, people were not used to seeing their likenesses in shades of gray. They wanted color. Photographers soon hired the portrait painters to embellish daguerreotypes with dry powdered pigments, which they applied with camel-hair brushes, and thus the technique of hand painting photographs was born.
Enfield states that anyone can learn to paint on a photograph. Even if you have never studied color before, you can learn the concept of putting paint on a photographic support. And then, like anything else, it is just a matter of practice to get to the point where you feel proficient and in control enough to create your own style.
Enfield goes through the steps on how to paint on all types of photographs from silver gelatin to inkjet and wet plate glass ambrotypes to tintypes. She touches on color theory and how to mix different mediums including oil, color pencils, food dye, acrylics, watercolors, pastel chalks and more, as well as how to work on different substrates from paper to glass.
