The Optical Magic Lantern Journal (August 1891)

138 Tho Optical Magio Lantern Journal and Photographio Enlarger. The Palette should be of white porcelain, as wood palettes are useless for transparent colours. A good Substitute for a palette may be made by a piece of | clear glass about half-plate size, with a half-sheet of | vue notepaper gummed at the corners of the under side. The Easel.—A small retouching desk makes a very good easel. The slideis held atan angle of about 4Sdeg., and a sheet of white paper placed horizontally under the slide will enable the details to be clearly seen. Some artists, especially those who only paint slides occasionally, prefer to dispense with an easel and hold the slide in the fingers. If this plan is adopted, a box about six inches high may be placed on the table: a sheet of notepaper laid on the box, and the slide with its lower edge resting on this paper, may be held at a suitable angle by the left hand. Of course only the right hand is then at liberty for work, but the slide can be easily laid flat on the paper when cleaning brushes and the like, so that the method is handier than it might at first appear to be. (To be continued. ) 10: The Good Templar Van and Lantern. THE annexed reduced pen-and-ink sketch depicts the first Good Templar Mission Van, which was dedicated last year at their Crystal Palace Féte, and has since travelled through Kent. Hants, Isle of Wight, Surrey, Middlesex, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincoln, and Yorkshire, and is now in Lancashire. Its attendant missionaries—Mr. and Mrs. Fisk, of London—give temperance addresses, and exhibit with their magic GOOD TEMPLARS TEMPERANCE MISSION VAN lantern in the open-air, when the evenings—with the aid of an awning to darken the sheet—are dark enough to show the series of ‘“‘ Buy Your Own Cherries,” or the ' specially-made Good Templar and temperance series | of photographic slides they possess. The van is a veritable house on wheels, with collapsible harmonium, folding chairs, tables and bed, enamelled iron and “ crockery-ware” ; a winter coalcooking stove, and a summer “ Wanzer Cooker Mes books and pamphlets for sale; diagrams to lecture with; | hymn sheets for singing, and pledge-cards for signing. A long platform falls down from its side, with an extension gangway from it to a small lantern platform, | from whence the pictures are projected on a sheet covering the side of the van. The van isused mainly : for visiting villages where temperance teachings may not be popular ; in spreading temperance teaching, and in organizing work. During its first few months its missioners have secured one thousand adherents to the total abstinence pledge, and been the means of forming a score of Good Templar lodges, and other temperance organizations, on hitherto unoccupied, and sometimes hostile, ground. The lantern is a feature which greatly takes among the villagers of all ages. The good work already done has occasioned a call for more vans similarly equipped, and to build these the Good Templars—who have over one hundred thousand juvenile and adult members in England alone—have just held a bazaar at Holborn Town Hall, where many M.P.'s and other dignitaries attended, and some £900 was received, while the goods remaining will realise several hundreds more in aftersales. The lantern takes the usual 33in. slides, and any who may feel disposed to donate any temperance slides, they can be addressed to Good Templar Buildings, Edmund Street, Birmingham, where they will be: gratefully acknowledged by Mr. Joseph Malins. On Colouring Dry-Plate Lantern Slides witn Aniline Colours. By ARTHUR LE BOUTILLIER. | NO one who has attended illustrated lectures or exhibitions of lantern slides can have failed to observe the pleasure with which well-coloured pictures are received by the audience. Not only do such make a break in the monotony of the plain slides, but, if true to nature, with the tints delicately and judiciously applied, they give a realism to the scene unobtainable in the plain photograph. Makers of lantern slides are apt, when at work, to overlook the fact that the perfection of the picture depends on its appearance on the screen, and not on. the beauty of the slide itself. Hence it is that so. many wet-plate slides (nearly all, in fact) are too dense to look brilliant and transparent in the shadows when enlarged much more than to sixteen or eighteen feet, even with the very best of modern stereopticons. The: idea that absolutely clear glass in sky and water is. always necessary is passing away before the beautiful cloud effects and reflections so easily obtained in dryplate slides, and, above all, colour can be so quickly and easily given to these effects that the glaring brush. or finger-marked slides so common to-day will soon be as obsolete as the old oil-painted views of twenty years ago. If any reader of this little article will adopt the following few hints, aided by his own experience, success in obtaining beautiful coloured slides will be assured. ; For this work the common aniline dye colours are used. Three brushes are necessary: one broad camel’s-hair, about an inch in width, one medium-sized | fine-pointed sable brush, and one quite small sable ‘brush for very delicate tinting. Prepare a medium. solution of gum arabic—that sold in bottles in any | Stationery store will do—and all is ready. The work