This Tips Page has been in the works for a while. I've been trying all sorts of different techniques and mediums to find out what works and what doesn't work with inkjet papers. One of the big problems with hand coloring on inkjet paper is that people have a preconceived notion of what hand coloring is because of what they have learned about hand coloring on photographic black and white papers. I'm going to start out by saying they are nothing alike and will never be the same so stop comparing apples to oranges and lets find something that works with inkjet paper and make it our own. Now that being said, I think I need to explain myself. I've spent countless hours trying different mediums, I've spent all sorts of money buying oils, pencils, crayons, watercolors, not to mention all the different types of sealers and pre treatments to allow hand coloring on inkjet papers. Guess what not much works, in most cases anything you apply to inkjet paper will damage the surface of the paper and smear or mar the surface. Non of which is acceptable. I also tried many different sealers to top coat the inkjet paper and protect it from damage. But....isn't there always a BUT.....when I applied any of the different mediums to the print they either did not stick, did not blend or did not allow for translucency, which you need to have for the appearance of hand coloring.

Before you get totally bummed out there was success with pastel chalks and some pencil types. I promise to discuss the good things that came out of this exploration but I felt it was important to also talk about all the things that didn't work because I want to save you the aggravation and expense of testing different techniques yourself. I'm going to split this Tips Page into two sections. What Works and What Doesn't Work.

The first section will talk about hand coloring on inkjet papers with soft pastel chalks and pencils.

Soft Pastel Chalks in stick form (soft chalks work better than hard chalks)

Colored Pencils (oil base, charcoal pencil most soft pencils will work)

100% cotton - cotton balls
tissue or soft lint free cloth

magic rub eraser or a gum eraser

black & white print on inkjet matte paper

Here are some links to purchasing supplies on line

Dick Blick Art Material
http://www.dickblick.com/categories/pastels/

http://www.dickblick.com/categories/coloredpencils/

Choosing a good paper for your print is very important. I've tested gloss, pearl and matte finish papers. The only one that accepts medium is the matte finish paper. There are many different types of matte finish papers on the market so rather then give you a brand name I'll give you attributes to look for in a workable matte finish paper. I mainly stuck with two types a smooth matte single weight paper that is approximately 280 gsm and also a double weight Fiber Base smooth matte paper that was approximately 360 gsm.  Both work, but I found it much easier to work with the heavy weight Fiber Base paper, it held up to blending and erasing. Stay away from papers that have too much texture they don't allow for blending.

Inkjet prints can be made in either a cold tone or a warm tone depending on your needs. When hand coloring portraits I prefer to begin with a warm tone fiber paper, the warm skin tone makes a nice base to work with.

Choose a solid table with good lighting. Be sure to have a waste basket handy to discard used cotton balls or tissue. I also recommend a damp cloth to wipe your hands because pastel chalks are messy and get all over your fingers.

You can tape your print to a cardboard backer if you like but it's not necessary. Personally, I like to tape the prints to a piece of cardboard, it makes them easier to handle. If you're going to use a backer hold the print in place with a light adhesive tape something that will peel off easily with out leaving tape residue. I've used blue painters tape and also Post-it Correction & Cover-up Tape made by 3M. The tape sticks but then peels right off without damaging the print. Blue painters tape is available at most hardware stores. Post-it Correction tape used to be easy to find in most office supply stores but it's getting tougher to find. I've used 1" wide Post-it (item #658) DO NOT USE REGULAR TAPE. IT WILL DAMAGE THE PRINT.

When working on small areas apply a thin even coat of chalk and then smooth the area by using your fingers, a cotton ball, a soft tissue or lint free cloth. For larger areas apply the pastel chalks using the side of the stick. You'll see very quickly that you want to have a light hand, don't press down heavy when applying the chalk. Also avoid hard chalks that can potentially scratch the paper surface. If you get color in areas that you want to remove use the magic eraser and dust off the residue before continuing with the chalks.

I suggest starting with the lightest color as your base and then apply thin layers of darker colors over the lighter. The nice part about applying thin layers of the chalk is that you can apply a second or third color over the first and blend them together. The blending technique works well and creates a more realistic color application. The thinner you can keep your layers the more translucent your work will be and allows the image to show through.

(TIP) Don't try for dark saturated colors, stick with soft pastels and lighter colors and you'll have the most success.

I suggest working from top to bottom so that you're hand is not smudging over the finished area of your print. Working with chalks is a bit messy and dusty so patience and cleanliness are a virtue if you want to avoid smudging.

When applying pencil hold the tip on an angle to apply color evenly. You'll notice that you can see the stroke of the pencil line. If you use a hard pencil or use the sharpened tip of the pencil you'll find that it can indent or scratch the paper surface, so a soft handed approach works best.

Pencil is not really blendable so the use of pencil is mainly kept to detail and small areas. I like using pencils on the stems of flowers and leaves, to give color to pupils and bring out edge detail.

As I've mentioned before chalks are dusty and easily smeared. So when you're done you'll want to seal the print to prevent damage. I recommend using a clear matte sealer like Krylon Matte Finish Spray (#1311). If comes in an aerosol spray can and is available at most art supply stores as well as hardware stores.

Always apply aerosol sealers in a well ventilated open area preferably outside. Apply thin coats of sealer holding the can 10 to 12 inches away from the print. It's important not to apply too much sealer because you don't want the chalk to get wet. Once the print is sealed and dry you're done.

As promised I'm going to go over all the things I tried that didn't work. I'll do my best to describe the results and show examples of what happens when applying different mediums to inkjet papers.

These would be anything similar to oils used for hand coloring on photographic papers. For example Marsall Oils or Arista Translucent Oils. These oils work very well on true silver gelatin photographic papers but they don't work on inkjet papers. When applying a translucent oil to photographic paper you want the oil to sit on the surface of the paper and then allow you to work the oil into the paper with a circular blending motion. When you do this with inkjet paper the oil absorbs into the paper immediately and has no movement or blendable qualities. There is also no way to remove oils that have gone over lines or into areas that you don't want colored. I also tried applying translucent oils to glossy and semi gloss papers looking for something that allowed for a blendable color application. What happens is that the oils move over the smoother inkjet surface but almost immediately begin to remove inks with the oils. Small white dots appear at the applied location and become more prevalent as you try to blend. Not Acceptable

I did have success using colored pencils in finer areas for detail work but when I tried to apply color over a larger area using the pencils I was not happy with the results. You can clearly see pencil strokes. Not Acceptable

These would be similar to the soft chalk pastels that I found success with so don't confuse the two. Oil pastels have a denser more waxy consistency rather then the chalky feel of the the other pastels. The difference is very apparent when you apply the oil pastel to the paper surface. It goes down with a very thick opaque look like a crayon line. Once the line is down you can't blend it or move it at all. If you can't blend the medium or soften it to the point of seeing the image through with transparency then it's not a workable medium in my opinion. Not Acceptable

This shows how the oil pastels look almost like a crayon when they are applied. They don't blend and don't smooth out when you rub them.

Watercolors, I know what you're saying, "Why would you even try".......well you know me I'll try anything at least once. In the case of watercolors you might actually be surprised that the biggest complaint I have is what it does to the paper after applying the watercolor. The paper is left with a buckled bubbly appearance any place watercolor was applied. The water absorbs into the paper and swells the size of the paper in that area. That in itself can be a big problem but the other problem is that the watercolor absorbs into the paper and bleeds. This is a natural quality of watercolors so it should be anticipated as a natural result. But when you're trying to create a hand colored effect watercolors just don't do it. I also tried wetting a larger area of the print and found the inks immediately began to lift from the paper so that didn't work. Not Acceptable

After trying different mediums on inkjet papers I thought well maybe if we created a barrier to prevent the inks from coming up we might have a better surface to apply color. So I coated several inkjet prints with Glamour 2 a sealer made by Breathing Color to seal canvas prints. We also tried Eco Print Shield by Premier Art. We applied using a brush and a roller to see if there was a difference, the roller was a smoother application. Both of the sealers went on fairly clear but with a small amount of dulling to the paper surface. When we tried to apply color just about every thing we tried went on and when you tried to blend it it came right back off. The sealers all worked too well, they don't allow for the color to be absorbed into the print. Which led us to try different clear gesso's which are sealers with tooth.

This example print was coated with a thin layer of semi gloss sealer.

I know it's a little hard to see but I applied sunny yellow to the center flower and a dark blue to the flower on the right and then used a cotton ball to soften and blend the appearance but most of the color just wiped right off.

We had read about using Clear Gesso to create a barrier to protect the paper surface and yet still have a workable surface to apply color. We tried two different Clear Gesso's, Windsor & Newton Clear Gesso and Liquitex Clear Gesso. Both claim to be completely clear transparent when dry. Nope, they definitely are not clear over photographs. We applied both gesso's using a foam brush and also a roller to see which application went on the smoothest. They were about the same but the foam brush did leave some visible streaks. What was most disappointing was how much the clear gesso dulled the surface of the print. The nice bright black and white print was visibly dull and flat in appearance. This in itself made the surface not acceptable for hand coloring. But we continued to test anyway to see what happened. What we found was that gesso created such a toothy surface almost what you would call sand paper rough that nothing moved or blended. When we applied an oil with a Q-tip or cotton tip applicator the cotton just ripped apart and we had cotton fibers everywhere. We tried applying color with a brush but the color went on so strongly that it appeared almost opaque. Not Acceptable

Last but not least we tried using the Krylon Matte Finish spray to prep the paper to accept color. Because it's a spray on application we coated several prints outside with different layers of sealer. What we found was that the spray on sealer was never even enough to fully coat the surface without over coating or leaving open patches from under coating. So when we tried to apply color it was too toothy in some areas and open patches of print in other areas and the color did not go down evenly. Not Acceptable

What we did find was that the Krylon Matte Finish spray works well as a finish coat to protect the pastel chalks from smudging. We talk about it in the section above "Finishing Your Print".

I know it seems like a lot of work to tell you what doesn't work but when you keep getting asked the question "How do I hand color on my digital inkjet prints?" you want to be able to give an accurate and informed answer. Instead of saying well not much works I can now tell people through trial and error what does and what doesn't work for us.

This Tips Page is just that a set of tips to help you work on your hand coloring skills. I'm not the definitive answer on hand coloring so if you have any suggestions or techniques that you'd like to share with other photographers please feel free to contact us and we'll add your information to this Tips Page.