Hand painted photographs have been around since the invention of photography. The original intent was to add life to black and white portraits. They lost favor for a short time when color photography came on the scene but have had a resurgence since the 1960s. Contemporary artists have moved beyond traditional uses. For us, hand painting takes a photograph from the realm of modern machine-age precision to the soft, expressive life of a painting.

I find drawing stressful; it takes me a long time to get a drawing to the point that I am happy with the result. When I was in school, I focused on illustration. I spent a lot of time finding reference photographs until one day I decided I could take them myself. I used my photographs to draw from; then I began tracing what I wanted from them. Until I finally decided that I would skip the drawing and color the photograph!

This is the progression of creating a hand colored photograph of Tootsie Pops. The first image is the original photo that I took at the farmers’ market. When converting it to black and white, forget about the zone system range of grays, instead concentrate of getting a fairly light print.

As you begin coloring, keep your pencil sharp and concentrate on coloring light layers. The final image will have multiple layers and you will adjust the colors by adding light layers of other colors to get what you want.

There are many things I love about hand coloring photographs. I love the way color can be used to intensify depth and lead the viewer through an image, drawing their attention to aspects I want to be sure they don’t miss. I have total control of the color scheme and mood and whether or not I want to heighten the realism.

This last example is done with watercolor pencils and you can see that I was selective in what I chose to color; I hope that you are drawn to the little grasshopper!