What are the best type of colors (water, oil, guash etc.) for hand-coloring B&W prints apart for those specialized color retouching kits, which I find a little costly?

-- xosni (xosni@gega.net), April 29, 2001

Answers

The 'special' kits are simply coloured drawing inks. I'm sure that the bottles of inkjet refill ink, available in Cyan, Magenta and Yellow would do just fine as well, and you should be able to mix any colour you like out the 3 inks.
Watercolour, oil and guash are pigment colours that don't have the transparency to let the print detail show through. The inkjet refills that I reffered to are generally dye based.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), April 30, 2001.

You can find the answer to almost any question about handcoloring prints at http://www.handcolor.com. My wife and I mostly use Prisma colors (pencils) that can be found at almost any art supply store. Marshalls also makes pencils and oils especially for handcoloring.

-- Joe Miller (jmmiller@poka.com), April 30, 2001.

Go to http://www.zxorb.com and take a look at the hand coloring work of Richard Prehn. One of his images is on the cover of the Marshalls book and he does workshops & seminars for them. I know he uses their products, among others, and chooses his oils, pencils and other color media because it works. He is first a believer in results, no matter the source. If you go there & look I know he will answer email questions (within reason) if you care to ask.

-- Dan Smith (shooter@brigham.net), April 30, 2001.

Pete,

"The 'special' kits are simply coloured drawing inks..."

I believe the Marshall 'inks' are oils!

chris

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), May 03, 2001.