Coloring the ‘Migrant Mother’
Under - Art, Design, My Musings, PhotographyThere were three things (among several) that I really wanted to do for some time:
- Colorize a black and white photo (that I’ve never done before)
- Give Recolored a try and
- Start using my Wacom A5 tablet that I bought a year ago for sketching and never got the time to actually use it
So, having combined all of these into one task, I picked up the iconic photograph of Migrant Mother for this, taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936 during the Great American Depression, which I also mentioned few days back.
The thing that I wanted to avoid in this exercise is to have that artificial look-n-feel that we normally get to see when a black and white photograph is converted into color. Also, rather than just adding colors to make this photograph look like a real color-photo, my objective would be to capture the essence of this photo in colors and retain it. This can be done by using a color palette that is not overpowering and simply complement the original image.