Manage Your Life
Monday, December 7, 2009
DIY: Turn a WOW Home Photo Into a Major Piece of Art For Your Walls
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- by Devonia, on Wed Sep 23, 2009 8:03am PDT
Do you have a great family photo that you would love to turn into a
huge personal painting for your home? Maybe that super shot of your
hubby breaking the finish line in first place in the marathon, or
granddad hammering together a wood rocking horse, or even a family
shot eating hot dogs that you just love?
Could be your rec room would be the perfect place for paintings of
your little girl going through drill team exercises and your little
boy hitting that homer- maybe your office would lighten-up if you
had a painting of your baby in the tub splashing water up to the
ceiling or your toddlers making wishes as they blow away
dandelions. Would this make a perfect gift for someone special? You
could never paint something like this?
Well, maybe you could... I did.
It was like "coloring".
I'm so very
excited about the potential of this paint -
HD High Definition by Plaid. My artist's heart
wept when I realized how much was possible with it.
The paint is being touted as an alternative for oils and
demonstrated used for traditional art. It is sooooo fine in its own
right that I wanted to design to take full advantage of the
dimension and texture it offers - plus take advantage of how easy
it is to use. Amazing stuff... It was so easy to completely convert
this family photo of my grandson on playday to an art painting for
his room. I just tweaked my photo, sized it, printed out the
numbered pattern, transferred the pattern with graphite transfer
paper, selected my colors and started painting.
I had the " mdf canvas" cut at Home
Depot, 24 x 36 . I primed it with shake and rattle Kilz, worked on
printing the patterns while the primer dryed, and once the pattern
was transferred, knocked it right out that afternoon. Though I
blocked in some of it with Plaid acrylic matching paint, most was
straight from the bottle HD paint. The squeeze bottles have a tip
that can be used for fine detailing and effects or you can brush or
apply this paint with a pallette knife. I did a little of all of
it. I let it cure for a few days and then sprayed it with a matte
sealer cuz I don't like shiny - but, wow, I love this texture!
Check out the beaded bracelet & dimensional sunglasses. Who
could imagine paint could do that? I love it! Instead of a frame,
I've chosen to hang this with exposed industrial hardware clips
that can be painted bright colors or left silver. I'm going to
leave these silver, I think. My grandson is the little
fellow in the center. I think this will be great for his room. Hope
he likes it.
NOTE: Additional pattern information. I sized the
" photo pattern" and converted it into actual inches that
would work for the art piece. With a software ruler snapped to the
resized and tweaked image (now grayscale, more than a line drawing
but less detail than the photo) , I sectioned the big pattern into
appx blocks of 8 x 10 so my printer could print them out. I
numbered the pages so I wouldn't get lost. Printed each page of
the pattern out, taped the pieces together so that all of my lines
met, covered my board with sheets of graphite paper, placed the
pattern over it and traced over it with a ballpoint pen, pressing
pretty hard, to transfer it. It took longer to transfer the pattern
than to paint it, I think. And I could have done a better job if I
had been precise in my transferring of the pattern.
Related: work, wallart, wall decor, tweens, school, saving, photos, painting, office, home, gifts, fine art, family, diy, devonia, decorating, crafts, children, art
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Posted by carolh Tue Sep 29, 2009 8:46am PDT
Devonia-was looking to see what people were saying about the political blogs done by you but nothing is there-has it moved? It was very interesting and informative and I am so disappointed to not be able to find anything--
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Posted by Mrs. Carol B Sun Nov 15, 2009 12:31pm PST
Hi Devonia,
Just love this post. I've always done my art free hand right from scratch then learned that even the old masters traced and used all these tools. I still prefer free hand but have bent to tracing some things once in a while. Am I stubborn, yeh! Fabulous job. I had no idea you were an artist............
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Posted by Devonia Wed Nov 18, 2009 7:08am PST
Thanks Carol. Yes, I'm an artist and I've been very fortunate to contribute to our family income for years from my kitchen table.
It doesn't diminish the outcome, in fact may enhance it and broaden the expression of our talent, to use the tools available to us. Can you imagine how the old masters would have felt and what they might have done had they had as much as we have to work with today? It's mind boggling.
Thanks for taking time to peek back, Carol. I appreciate it.
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