texturized photo
distressed, hand-tinted photo
bleached photo
I was invited to a workshop with the Experimental Artists' group while I was visiting Pasadena. Avinger N. showed us several techniques to alter photos. Last week I picked up an old movie still from the "free pile" at the recycling center's artists' reception. The old black and white photo was perfect for hand-tinting. I soaked the photograph in water for about 30 seconds to loosen the emulsion, then sanded it lightly. My watercolors took to the photograph easily and I was impressed with how well they blended into the image after drying. Avinger also showed us the effect of liquid Draino and bleach on color photographs. We used photographs printed on photo paper (versus inkjet photopaper) to separate the cyan/red/yellow colors. I used a bleach pen (which is like a gel pen) to draw "steam" on the photograph and left it on for about 30 seconds before washing it off. Left too long, the bleach strips the colors off entirely. It was more difficult to control the color stripping with a pan of liquid bleach - you had to paint areas you wanted to keep by painting gel medium on the photo first. The liquid Draino was very tricky - you dipped the photo in it for a split second, then put it face-down on paper. If done properly, you got a mirror image of the photo without the cyan colors. More often, we managed to smear color onto paper - the images were lost entirely. Another neat technique was using textured surfaces (you can buy textured plates in the scrapbooking section of Target) to create interesting effects on photos. You simply wet the photo, then rub over the texture with a fine-grain sandpaper. I had an old black and white photo I took of a train barn, and it came out fabu.
