Bromoil printing and bromoil transfer

by Emil Mayer

If certain parts of the picture are to be accentuated and all the rest is to be rendered visible, even if only sketchily, one may also work in the reverse way. The whole picture should be given a thin coating of ink, as even as possible, which should be hopped only just enough to barely bring out the drawing. Then work out those parts, to which attention is to be directed, keeping as closely as possible to the outlines. When these, the most important parts of the print, are finished, it is frequently seen that the rest of the picture is too delicate. This should then be gone over again with the ink as at first, without completely working it up, until the correct tonal value is attained. Then the necessary harmony is obtained by going over the outlines with the brush.

Large Heads.—The far-reaching possibilities of the bromoil process offer special advantages for the free modification of tones in portraits. It is advisable to take the portraits with a neutral or dark background. The only exception is when a head is to be done in red chalk, when a white background is preferable. Starting from such a negative in bromoil printing the background may be kept, according to choice, either light or very dark, or be shaded. One precaution should, however, be observed in every case; before starting on the head itself, the background should be worked in lightly from the margins toward the head, so that no dark line may be formed when working on the outlines of the portrait. If this shows during the work, it must be worked down to harmony with the background at once before it gets too dark. One can, therefore, from a given negative, produce at will either a fully worked-up head against a dark ground, or a light, sketchy image on the light background of the paper, or any intermediate stage.

If, as previously suggested, parts of the picture are to be treated sketchily, while others are to be fully worked up, the parts which should appear sketchy are allowed to remain coarse-grained, while the structure gradually becomes finer in passing into the worked-up portions. No portion, however, should be made perfectly structureless. Bromoil prints thus worked up are much more artistic than those pictures which are known by the name of photo-sketches. The latter usually show a head, printed with all the gradation and fullness of detail given by printing-out paper. The tone becomes gradually lighter toward the edges, where we find some strong lines, imitating the character of a line drawing, all surrounded by a perfectly white background. To the trained eye the technique of such photo-sketches is abominable, for the contrast between the inimitable detail of the head and the perfectly blank background is so great that it cannot be bridged over by the effort to imitate the manner of an etching. On the other hand, such problems can be solved in an artistic way with our process, for the head may always be produced in a rather coarse grain, so that it dovetails harmoniously into the sketchily treated surroundings.

Oil-Painting Style.—If it is desired to prepare portraits which resemble reproductions of oil paintings, one should proceed as follows: the head should be first inked in considerably deeper than it should appear in the final print; then, if the head is on a light background, it will appear vigorous, even if not much ink is used. If, however, the background is dark and heavy, the inked-up head will appear considerably lighter because of the contrast. For this style of work it is best to select a warm dark brown ink. When the head is finished, some very soft ink of the same shade should be placed very thickly in the corners and margins of the picture, and this should be worked from all sides towards the head, which naturally must not be touched with the soft ink. Finally the blending of the head with the background should be very carefully done. In the lower part of the portrait the clothing should blend into the background in a similar manner; only one must take care in making the negative that no light pieces of drapery or accessories are used, because they cannot be easily completely covered. Any lighter accents, which may be desired in the background, should be made by removing the ink with a clean brush. One may thus make the head stand out in a dark oval, or attain similar painting effects. Prints prepared in this way ought not to be defatted, as they then lose their similarity to oil paintings. They must be left to dry for several days, in a place free from dust, until the thickly-applied ink has hardened.

Night Pictures.—Twilight and night effects can be easily obtained from ordinary negatives by carefully swelling the bleached print so that the differences of relief existent in the print are only slightly brought out. Then the capacity of the lights and shadows for taking the ink is not so very different, and the gradation is shorter. A second possibility of obtaining the same effect is offered by using mainly soft ink, which, as is well known, adheres to a certain extent even in the high lights of the print; only the soft ink must be applied very carefully and thinly in the shadows, so that these do not become choked up with ink.

In this way one may make night pictures from daylight exposures, accurately corresponding in tone values to night exposures. Previous practice has been to use either underexposed negatives or overexposed prints for such effects; in both cases the night effects were gloomy, but false in tone values, and usually without details in the shadows. In bromoil printing the gradation can be shortened as described, without loss of drawing, and one can simulate perfectly the short scale and mysterious gloom of night. If the too dense sky of the negative cannot be sufficiently darkened by the use of soft ink, its inking should be postponed till the print is dry.

Prints with White Margins.—If it is desired to obtain bromoil prints with margins of the natural paper, the negative should be masked with clean-cut black safe-edges of lantern slide binding strips, or one may use a mask, and print or enlarge on a sheet of bromide paper large enough to leave unexposed margins of the desired width. In making enlargements the mask, cut out of rather thin card, should be pinned on the enlarging screen over the sheet of bromide paper. After bleaching such a print the tanned image will appear slightly depressed within a strongly swollen, white frame of less tanned gelatine. The inking is done without any attention being paid to this unprinted edge. In consequence of its strong relief this gelatine does not take any ink from the brush, or, at most, a mere trace. When the print is finished, the ink is easily wiped from the white margins by means of a damp cloth, which removes this ink with the greatest ease. The finished and dried print is enhanced in effect if a plate mark is impressed in this wide white margin.

The Swelled-Grain Image.—Coarse-grain printing in bromoil has previously depended on a very carefully determined relation between the degree of relief of the film and the consistency of the ink, which had to be so chosen that the ink was not very easily taken up by the film. If inking was then skilfully done, the structure of the face of the brush was visible to a certain extent all over the print and gave the effect of a more or less coarse and irregular-grained image. It was obviously necessary for the success of a print of this type that no portion of the image should be gone over several times with the brush, for, if this was done, the structure was obliterated and the spot in question became smooth. Since, also, the requirement that the degree of relief must be rather high for the chosen consistency of the ink could never be fulfilled by the shadows, since these always take the color easily, we often obtained an undesired smoothness of effect in the shadows. For this reason typical coarse-grain prints could not always be produced with certainty.

I therefore endeavored to improve the technique of bromoil in this respect and to work out a grain method which could be depended upon with certainty in every case. The basic thought was that the fundamental basis for making a coarse grain print should be a part of the film itself, and I endeavored to prepare the latter so that a grain structure could be produced which should equally underlie all parts of the image.

Such a grain structure can theoretically be obtained in the following way: if we allow a properly prepared uninked bromoil print, which has been brought to the proper degree of relief, to dry off a little and then spray it by means of an atomizer with extremely fine liquid drops, the film will again swell up under every drop, but only under these; and when we ink up, we obtain a definite grain effect which, however, only persists if the inking is completed before the sprayed-on water grain again dries out. Such a relief grain is not permanent, because the subsequently swollen portions of the film cannot retain the difference in swelling. This process, therefore, has only experimental interest and practically can be used but rarely.