The pencils are ordinary lead pencils of the best quality. Those marked H and HH will generally be found the best.
The object of the "retouching medium " is to give a bite or tooth to the pencil so that it will be possible to mark readily on the film. Of the many mediums which are made we have known none which gives better results than does Cadett's Mattline.
We will describe as accurately as we can the method in which the pencil is used, premising our remarks by saying that practice is in this branch of photography more all-important than in any other.
The negative must be varnished first of all. We will presume that it represents a head and shoulders portrait. The retouching will naturally come on the face only. A drop of the mattline is dropped on to the centre of it, and is quickly spread over the portion which is to be retouched, either the finger or a small pad of wash leather being used. The film is briskly rubbed in a circular manner till it appears to be quite dry again.
There will now be a tooth, on which the pencil will bite excellently.
The first experiments may be made without a retouch ing desk, the negative being placed against the pane of glass of a window, a piece of white tissue paper going between the negative and the glass. The position neces sary for retouching in this manner will be found to be very fatiguing, and the desk will be found a necessity when even a moderate amount of retouching work is done.
A print is taken from the negative before it is re touched at all. It will probably at once be seen that certain points would bear improvement. Probably there will be observed many spots somewhat more transparent than the surrounding portions of the film. These prob ably are due to defects in the skin of the sitter, which are too slight to be seen by the eye, but which, being of a yellowish colour, are very visible to the photographic film. The next thing we will notice is perhaps that the oblique line which passes down from the inside corner of the eye to the cheek appears far more pro nounced in the print than in the model. The cause is pretty much the same as it was in the last case. The
effect given is that of an expression of care and anxiety. The exact same applies to the lines which generally fall obliquely from the lower corners of the nose, at times from the corners of the mouth. All these generally appear stronger in an untouched photograph than in nature, and, if they be left so, give a woebegone ex pression to the face of the sitter.
We shall first of all confine ourselves to the eradi cation of the evils which we have mentioned.
The spots are the first thing to turn our attention to. The pencil is made very sharp, and is gently worked over one of these, beginning at the centre, and working round and round to the edge. It will be found surprisingly easy to make the spot disappear entirely, or nearly so.
The lines are not quite so easy. These must not be entirely worked out, but must be lightened and shortened. We begin at the lower end of each, and, working the pencil in short strokes in the direction of the lines, make these lower ends entirely blend into the rest of the face, whilst we work over the whole line, somewhat increas ing the density.
The next defect which may be noticed is a general roughness or want of evenness in the skin of the face. This will not take place if the model have a skin of per fectly peachy smoothness, but any irregularities either in texture or colour of the skin will be very strongly marked in the negative, and must be softened or entirely done away with. This is a thing rather difficult to do, as it generally involves working over almost the whole face of the negative, and it is quite likely that when one portion has been made smooth it will be found that it does not agree in density with those surrounding it—that, in fact, we have made small individual patches smooth whilst we have left a roughness on a large scale. To avoid this we must frequently look at the negative from such a distance as to get a general impression of it, and assure ourselves that we are doing correctly. The manipulation of the pencil is much the same as when spots are being filled in.