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: I'm receiving many questions about transferring the pattern so I'm following up with 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.
Hope this helps. If not, it's really ok if you use the email link below to contact me. I'll try to help.
Thank you, Celestina, for this beautiful *"Arte Y Pico Award".