DRAPERY FOR FIGURE SUBJECTS Portraits of draped subjects are popular with photographers chiefly because drapery offers so many opportunities for artistic treatment, being often more pleasing than everyday dress, which, more particularly in the case of feminine gar ments, goes so quickly out of fashion. As regards the material and colour of drapery, opinions largely differ ; some photographers use ordinary muslin, others a cheaper fabric called tarlatan, while a few favour bunting and silk shawls. Cheese - cloth is probably the best drapery for the figure, and muslin for the head. The material used should not be quite new, and should have been washed, wrung out and rough dried.; new materials contain too much stiffen ing to allow of their following the lines of the figure properly, and this is particularly the case with tarlatan, which needs a thorough washing in hot water to adapt it to the purpose. White flimsy material photographs too white in ordinary lighting, and it is therefore better to make it slightly dingy or less actinic by dyeing a pale yellow colour, by steeping it in coffee, or by allowing it to become somewhat soiled with usage.
Blue, yellow, and even black muslin are also advocated by many workers, but strong blues and yellows should be weakened by rinsing in water and hanging in the sunshine to rough dry. The lines of the figure show very well indeed through thin dark muslin, and good effects are obtainable by draping a thin white material over a dark one; but in all cases of head and shoulder drapery more depends upon the softness and the character of the lighting than upon the actual composition of the material. Upon the lighting, exposure, and development depends whether the material will photograph the same tone as the flesh.
Drapery for the full length figure need not be so thin as that used for head and shoulder studies. Muslin and tarlatan are available, but cheese-cloth is much more amenable to the production of artistic folds, the choice largely depending upon whether the more or less dim outlines of the figure are required to show or not. No attempt should be made to reproduce the lines of orthodox clothes with cheese cloth, the best effects being obtained by, as it were, hanging the material upon the figure or by imitating the ancient Greek style. One of the many ways in which the Greeks differed from all other ancient peoples was in their method of covering their bodies. They did not make what may be rightly called clothes ; apparently they cut the cloth to the proper sizes, hemmed the ends, decorated the pieces with lines of coloured embroidery, and sewed on buttons. To make d, serviceable cheese
cloth garment in the Greek style, and suitable for full-length female figures, the width of the piece must be, for the long and flowing principal garment, equal to the height of the model. If seams are unavoidable, let them run vertically, they can then be more or less hidden in the folds. The width of the principal garment must be equal to double the distance between the extended finger-tips ; the width will thus be found to be ordinarily a little more than twice the person's height. Fold the piece ver tically. Next, on each side of the centre, and at such a distance apart as to leave an opening for the head, place a button and button-hole this opening should be the width of the model across the shoulders. Along the upper edge other buttons or hooks and eyes may be placed at about z in. intervals extending to the ends. This garment, put on over the head, has a closed side at the left, leaving the right open. The draping of this garment will alone give all the vertical effects desired and can be made to expose either of the arms, either of the shoulders, or the whole of one side of the figure. Undoing one or more of the buttons or hooks allows it to slip from either of the shoulders, and with only two buttons there is a sleeveless garment. If all the fastenings are done up and the others are put close to the neck, the whole figure can be covered, and yet one side may be exposed at By putting a girdle or sash around the figure an entirely new set of folds is obtained ; and pulling the garment up through the girdle and allowing it to fall gives a characteristic and Diana-like effect. With a crossed girdle or cincture over the shoulders still another series of folds is obtained which confines the garment to the figure and shows its outlines, and one has at the same time the alternative of bare or covered arms, and one side open. Over this, to add to the beauty and variety of the folds, is sometimes put a kind of mantle, consisting of a piece as long as the main garment, horizont ally, but only half its vertical depth. This the ancient Greeks buttoned on the shoulders and made into the same artistic folds as the under garment. When the ends are cut off diagonally they look Very well, and may be made to form a series of folds like pleats. Add to this a very long strip or scarf, about 24 in. wide and of indefinite length, to throw over the shoulders, to twist about the arms, or to festoon about the figure, and the photographer has all the neces sary materials for the ordinary drapery of the full-length figure.