People began handcoloring photographs right at the onset of photography and it was very popular until color film was invented. The artists used oil paints, applying thin washes over the photograph to highlight the important areas. Handcoloring was used primarily for portraits.

In recent years, handcoloring has made a come back. Some artists are still working with fiber based prints from the darkroom and oil paint, others are digitally coloring selective parts. I started out working on prints that I printed in the darkroom; I tried oil paints but prefered oil pastels and oil based colored pencils. Since I have moved from the darkroom to the computer, I use colored pencils on heavy, matte, inkjet paper. Printing rich black and white images without a color slant is difficult. If you don’t have a professional printer, there are photo labs that will print for you.

Here are the steps I go through when creating a handcolored black and white image:

All my images are originally in color so the first step is converting them to black and white. In software like Photoshop, you have several filters you can use for your conversion or you can create a custom filter. Contrast and a wide range of grays make beautiful black and white prints but not necessarily beautiful hand colored images. The black and white portions of the image do not hold color as well as the grays so I only use them in areas that I don’t intend to color. I print my images lighter than I would if I weren’t coloring them.

Tootsie Roll Pops from the Farmer’s Market

Converted to Black and White

Tootsie Roll Pops, stage 1

I begin the process with 4 colored pencils: cyan, magenta, yellow, and indegio. I don’t use black unless I am evening out a black background or perhaps an eye. In this first iamge, you can see that I have begun the process with the cyan, magenta, yellow, and indegio. I am being very careful to keep the white areas white. I also decided that I do not want as many red tootsie roll pops in the final image so I am leaving several of them untouched until I decide what I want to do.

Tootsie roll pops – stage 2

In Stage 2 you can see that I have decided to add a few more orange tootsie roll pops into the mixture. Since my layers
are very light, it is easy to convert a red one to an orange one. I have built up layers on the 2 different types of red pops to get a feel for how they will look. The chocolate pops are very dark in the print so I am not going to be able to add a lot of layers of colored pencil without getting chalky so I found a brown pencil to use. I will add my CYM Indegio to them to liven up the color.

Tootsie Roll Pops – Stage 3

I am continuing to stick with the CYM Indegio selection. I have determined which pops will become orange and purple. You can see that I am adding layers to intensify the base color. The base colors are adjusted using the other colors. For example, the orange tootsie roll pop starts with a yellow layer. I add a very light magenta layer. On the next layer, I will adjust the amount of yellow I put down to push the red layer toward orange. I continue using very light layers of magenta and yellow until I get the color I want. The red pops vary due to using the cyan and magenta for the darker ones and yellow and magenta for the bright ones.

I use complimentary colors to create my shadows. I am sticking to the basic colors so when I add shadows to the red pops, I am using the blue and yellow in combination. Until you get the hang of mixing colors, use a green that is similar in intensity to the red – a darker green for the cyan/magenta p0ps and a bright green for the others.
In the final image, the colors are intensified and I have worked on my shadows. I did go in with a white pencil to work on some of the highlights. to get a shine on the colored wrapper.

Tootsie Roll Pops – stage 4