Retouching

“ Retouching is exactly the same work on the negative as if the artist sat down before any other material. Upon it, if he has the genius, he can do almost anything, so that he has shadow enough as a basis. Here he becomes, as I have said, the creator, and of all the different operations of a negative, this is the portion where the artist stands out most prominently and proves what stuff he or she is made of. There is no end to the variety of work they may introduce as they work on—grains to look like engravings, hatchings, stippling, brush work. ”

“ One might be said to be entirely in favour of the process, one entirely discountenancing it, and between them one which is permissible as it has to do only with mechanical methods calculated to reinforce pigment, or the canvas or panel, and is not concerned with what might be called the artistic side of the art, such as retouching or filling in the missing parts of a painting. ”

“ RETOUCHING, OR STIPPLING THE NEGATIVE.
No photographic establishment in these days is considered to be well equipped that does not employ a skillful retoucher and provide all the apparatus and p64 conveniences for the proper performance of this very important branch of the art. ”

“ Every painter of worthy ambition, who had entered into the spirit of his craft, would desire to do all he could “on the fresh,” and would be satisfied with, and indeed glory in, the conditions and limitations of the noble technique. Masaccio, even at the beginning of the 15th century, is remarkable for the amount of fine pictorial effect he secured without reliance on retouching. It was second-rate artists, like Pinturicchio, who delighted to furbish up their mural pictures with stucco reliefs and gilding and to add touches of more brilliant pigments than could be used in the wet process. ”

“ When not painting fresco he is constant to the use of tempera. Unfortunately, he is too much given to sacrifice the transparency and depth of his colour by a lavish use of retouching à secco. In order to gratify his love for brilliancy, he produces an opaque surface, and is apt to give us a sort of splendid gaiety in exchange for real depth. His use of his gorgeous pigments is extremely skilful, especially towards the middle period. In the Sixtine Chapel frescoes, he has hardly let himself go, and in the Siena Library he inclines to be gaudy and glaring ”

“ The process is naturally executed by the aid of a more or less complete collection of photographs of the work of the master the faker intends to imitate. The retouching may follow the most varied methods. To take the most common case, that of oil painting, the new work can be carried out with oil colours previously kept on blotting-paper to drain off the oil which is then substituted with turpentine to give the colours their lost fluidity; it may also be effected with tempera colours or with colours the fluid228 element of which consists only of varnish. ”

“ She rents her face with painting, puts the best colours she can upon her present distresses and does her utmost to palliate and extenuate her losses, sets a good face upon them. But this painting, though it beautifies the face for the present, really rends it; the frequent use of paint spoils the skin, cracks it, and makes it rough; so the case which by false colours has been made to appear better than really it was, when truth comes to light, will look so much the worse. ”

“ It is not enough to be able to remove spots and blemishes, or soften off harsh contrasts; girls mostly get up to this mark of excellence, and produce those smooth, meaningless, pleasant portraits of everyday life. The retoucher must learn to keep an expression of the negative, or make one if not there, and this is the lofty calling of a true retoucher. He must put a soul into his model, else he cannot call himself an artist any more than the painter can claim the title who only daubs potboilers. ”

“ In a minute the whole party were most industriously engaged in disfiguring the objects around us by painting their faces, some to resemble tattooing, while others were decorated with black eyes, huge mustachios, and different embellishments, until it would have been impossible for friend or relation to have recognised any one of their visages. ”

“ Among the more primitive forms of picture writing are tattooing and body painting. Tattooing is used among many savage tribes to-day and all over the world. This was known in the most ancient times and is often practised to-day especially by sailors and boys, sometimes quite elaborately. ”

“ The dimness and uncertainty have aided the painter’s conception. It is not so much a face as the shadow of a face which is presented to us—the shadow of a lamb-like face, full of infinite meekness and patience, dirty and wounded, with masses of hair draggled and stuck with the blood which has trickled down the brow and cheeks to that indefinite beard. ”

“ The tatuer or her assistant stretches with her feet the skin of the part to be tatued, and, dipping a pricker into the pigment, taps its handle with the striker, driving the needle points into the skin at each tap. ”

“ I will paint you men and women, not as you see them on the street and in the drawing room—superficial resemblances—but as they really are to you and to me, human beings the true significance of which is not expressed in the drooping of a moustache, the lifting of an eyebrow. I will paint them in black or brown or red or blue, or in gold or bronze, as does the sculptor ”

“ So, too, in the case of a bust, the artist may feel that there is an expression in the eyes of the woman whose portrait he is modelling or latent in the curve of the lips, which summarises the impression of her character as he feels it. In his desire to emphasise the idea which he has in his mind, he will resort to colour in the eyes or lips; he may then feel the need of balancing notes of colour elsewhere, as in the shadows of the hair or in the fillet which binds it or in some ornament of jewelry ”

“ No artist could have evolved from his own mind such a curious mixture of character and weakness. The languid, dreamy eyes, with their drooping lashes, and the broad, low brow, unruffled by thought or care, were in strong contrast with the clean-cut, prominent jaw, and the resolute set of the lower lip. ”

“ As to face-painting. Rouge is indispensable, but care must be taken not to overdo it. The eyebrows must be darkened with sepia or Indian ink, and a camel's-hair brush—especially for fair people. With the same materials you must deepen all the lines of the face, if you want to make a young person look like an old one. ”

“ Tattooing prevails as widely among the lower races of the world as painting, and the fashionable designs range from a few blue lines on the face or arms, up to the flower-patterns with which the skins of the Formosans are covered like damask. Where the art is carried to perfection as in Polynesia, the skin is punctured, and the charcoal-colour introduced, by tapping rows of little prickers. ”

“ Another form of restoration of a most questionable character, as the decorative nature of the object cannot be claimed as an excuse, is that, by which a painting is transformed or embellished by repainting large missing portions more or less fantastically, or by supplying the artistic quality that is wanting. ”

“ Too long has the face been degraded from its rank as a thing of beauty to a mere vulgar index of character or emotion. We had come to troubling ourselves, not with its charm of colour and line, but with such questions as whether the lips were sensuous, the eyes full of sadness, the nose indicative of determination. I have no quarrel with physiognomy. For my own part, I believe in it. But it has tended to degrade the face æsthetically, in such wise as the study of cheirosophy has tended to degrade the hand. And the use of cosmetics, the masking of the face, will change this. ”

“ When we say of a portrait, "What an old-fashioned air," we are really saying, "That is the grandfather's face come back again." Even in the rudest times, and under the most unfavourable conditions, those who drew the human face did their best to copy the faces of their neighbours. An Egyptian artist never presented a fair-haired or round-eyed face as his type of beauty. ”

“ That is as it should be, for tattooing is of our gods and of our religion before the whites destroyed it. I was and am the master of our arts. I did not sketch out my design upon his skin with burned bamboo, as do some, but struck home the ama ink directly. My needles were the bones of one whom I had slain, an enemy of the Oi tribe. I myself gathered the candlenuts and, burning them to powder, mixed that with water and made my color. ”

“ But the painting is far from being without faults;—the face is a good deal too round and plump, the nose is made slightly aquiline—a decided mistake,—and the neck is much too short, at least so it appears in the engraving. ”

“ Tattooing hangs on a little. Human nature demand it. But human nature is dying likewise. Yeh, I ask you what would old Barnum say if he should come back and see me sitting here? Me, who was as good any day as Capt. Constantinus? I hate to think what. In those days talent counted. If you could sing or dance or tattoo it meant something. Now what does it mean? Look at the dancers and singers they have, and who is there that tattooes any more? It's all gone to smash, the whole world. ”

“ In regard to tattooing, I was told by the missionaries in New Zealand, that when they tried to persuade some girls to give up the practice, they answered, "We must just have a few lines on our lips; else when we grow old we shall be so very ugly." ”

“ Even the rude savage seeks to gratify his aesthetic tastes, so far as the means which nature places at his command permit. The custom of tattooing the skin is widely practiced among the lower races, and stars and circles, trees and plants, and other ingenious devices are impressed with laborious patience upon the different members of the body. ”

“ The mere idea of decoration as shown in what civilized people call deformations of nose, lip, ear, teeth, and in fact all parts of the body, is sufficient to account for the inception of any form of tattoo. ”

“ The earliest, simplest, and most harmless photographic deception is the printing of clouds into a bare sky. But the retoucher with his pencil and etching tool to-day is very skilful. A workman of ordinary skill can introduce a person taken in a studio into an open-air scene well blended and in complete harmony without a visible trace of falsity. ”

“ Some decorate their nose and the middle parting of the hair with a greasy-looking red pigment, while nearly every grown-up woman has her arms, neck, and low down on the collar bone most artistically tattooed in a variety of close, elaborate patterns. ”

“ He displays a taste in ornament, and has learned to dye his skin, and to tatoo it with rude figures of the sun and moon, before he has become ingenious enough to discover that he stands in need of a covering. ”

“ Among the women the tattooing extends over the face, fore part of the arms, and whole front of body continued backwards a little way over the shoulders, usually, but not always, leaving the back untouched. ”

“ They are a shy, timid race, greatly inferior in dignity and physical appearance to their continental kindred. They practise a coarse system of tattooing, cutting deep gashes on the face and body, which changes the naturally smooth skin to a rugged surface. ”

“ The men wear the merest rag of a garment, the women wear a kind of tunic covering the body, but the legs and thighs and feet are quite bare. The peculiar custom of tattooing the faces of the women, described in Chapter X., gives them rather a hideous appearance, and when seen in such a dress, with the face tattooed in that fashion, and with a bamboo pipe stuck in their mouths, smoking, the effect is not the most lady-like imaginable. ”

“ Wear is indicated perhaps most easily by the absence of clearness in lines designed to be distinct, and by an acquired evenness and monotony in passages which obviously were never meant to be monotonous and even. Re-touching is a more subtle matter. It is generally resorted to to repair the wear; and sometimes the re-touching is the work of the original artist, and sometimes it is the work of a later craftsman, concerned in the interests of publisher or dealer, or it may be in his own, if it is he who has become the possessor of the plate. ”

“ Whilst the males had every part of the face tattooed, and the thighs as well, the females had chiefly the chin and the lips, although occasionally they also had their thighs and breasts, with a few smaller marks on different parts of the body as well. There were regular rules for tattooing, and the artist always went systematically to work, beginning at one spot and gradually proceeding to another, each particular part having its distinguishing name. ”

“ There are a thousand physical transgressions that dim the lustre of the eye, or sink it too deep in the socket, or flatten it, or paint a circle round it. So of the face in general. There are a thousand forms of transgression that take away the carnation of the lip and cheek, and leave unnatural hues, not to say pimples and furrows, in its stead. ”

“ The third group of deformations or bodily alterations is color decoration, and under this we shall class body-painting, tattooing, and gashing.
Body-painting and face-painting are universal. The Gani wear no dress, but paint the whole body. ”

“ Before going further, make sure there are no blotches on your make-up's surface and that the grease has left no sheen.
Making Up the Eyes
The eyes are the most expressive of the features and their make-up is correspondingly important. Here John Emerson and Anita Loos are helping Basil Sydney, the noted English actor, to darken his eyes in accordance with movie technique.
The eyes are the most important and expressive features. The make-up which relates to them is all important. ”