Kathybell : Pop-Art Photo-Painting

Today I want to show you how to create a very personal present that will ALWAYS be a winner. This is perfect if the person you want to give a present to is very special to you, you want to show them how much you care about them and you’re not afraid to invest time into a self-made gift – but unfortunately you have run out of good ideas.

I find that when in doubt, beautiful (and well, let’s be honest, not really needed) presents are the best to give.

So, I wanted to give my friend something special, preferably using a photograph of us together, but didn’t want to resort to the overused photo-in-frame-solution because

a) no one ever wants another frame they don’t know where to put

b) it really has been overused and

c) I think it’s plain boring.

As it happened, when I went into the city center one day I saw a really nice painting of… flowers… I think… using only two colours. And I thought why not try and convert a photograph into a kind-of-pop-art-painting?
(I have no idea if that style is really called pop-art, but that’s what I’ve always called it in my head. Ha. Deal with it.)

So I took a picture of me and my friend

and turned it into black-and-white. You can easily do that with even the most standard photo-editing software, so no worries.

I then tried to get it as pixilated as I could, by using the sharpen-tool of my program.

Okaaay... this doesn't look different at all...

Quick note: as you may (or may not, in which case I would be delighted and advise you dearly to skip this paragraph) have noticed, I don’t know anything about technique other than the most basic stuff. Yay me. So, I think you could have done this a LOT more professional and this is by no means the only way to do it. It was just the easiest for me.

I then coloured all the black to really dark areas red. This took me quite some time, as I did it in Paint and had to redo it quite a few times because my 5-year-old self couldn’t contain itself and just had to colour over the lines… Now that I think about it, this really seems worrying…

Again: I am positive you could have done this a lot faster. I just didn’t know how.

The next step was to colour the lighter-nuanced greys… grey. Yeah. Just… even it out a bit. I mainly did this so that the grey would be darker than the original tone, so that I would be able to see the difference between white and grey while painting.

Now, this is how your photo-painting will (or is supposed to) look like when it’s finished. Looks great, doesn’t it?

But… how on earth do we get that onto the canvas now? This proved to be quite the tricky question. I ended up beaming it onto the canvas with the beamer I made my mum bring home from work, but if you can/ already have figured out other, easier ways to transfer it from the computer, please please tell me!

Now, paint all the coloured bit in colour, the grey bits grey and just leave out the white areas. Pretty self-explanatory. And there you go! Finished is the gorgeous piece of art!

You can just leave it like that, or, which I tried the next time, add a memorable quote, an inside joke or a personal message for your special person. Add anything you want to it to make it more personal.