423. Practice Work

Practice Work. For your practice work you should provide yourself with some negatives similar to the ones from which the prints in Illustration No. 13 were made. If you have none on hand, but you have the facilities, it is advisable to make a number of such negatives specially for this purpose. When you have no studio or no means of obtaining negatives, cast-off negatives, which will answer every purpose, may be secured from some studio.

424. Before attempting any work upon a negative, make a proof-print from the negative and pencil the outline on the print. Use this print as your guide. Begin the work of etching by first outlining the parts to be etched; then, as you proceed with the work make more proofs, so that you may have an accurate proof of the amount of work you are doing on the negative and the effect of the etching and penciling. If there were any special methods which you employed while etching or penciling, any special grade of pencil, etc., record all this data on the back of the final proof or of the intermediate proofs. File all of these, so that you may have a record of the work you have done. At any time in the future if you are working with a similar subject, you will be able to refer back to these proofs and learn exactly the manner in which you proceeded to secure the results.

425. The subject which we have used in illustrating this lesson is an average example of commercial work, but there are many shapes, as well as many different positions, in which the subject may be posed, making the application

of the etching and retouching somewhat different in each case. The principles, however, are exactly the same as those laid down in the lessons, and you must use your judgment in outlining the neck, remembering that there should be no angles or straight lines. Graceful curves always add beauty to the portrait, but do not carry your work to the extreme, and thus attempt to gain beauty at the expense of character or likeness of the individual.

Illustration No. 24 Subject in Decollete - Reproduction from Negatives before Etching.

See Paragraph 427.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Illustration No. 25. Subject in Decollete - First Stage - Preliminary Etching.

See Paragraph 428.