The Big Picture

The Fishbone-chair making process can be seen by clicking  here

I have a lot of upcycling ideas but posting is much faster than finishing projects.
Also, upcycling is not my only hobby, I like woodwork (than can be associated with upcycling when I use shipping pallets) and also like crafting in area I'm not use to. I guess I'm pretty eclectic.

That's why today I want to post a picture I have done by combining digital picture, printing, drawing and "painting". It's hard for me to use the word "painting" because I know that real talented painters are following my blog and I wouldn't like to offense them...

I needed to hang a fun painted picture of my son in his bedroom and wanted to make it myself. I decided to "upcycle" a simple printed picture into a painted on canvas picture, I'm stretching a little bit the "upcycling" definition so this project can fit into my blog ;-)

This is the original picture and the photoshopped one using the threshold function (Image/Adjustments/Threshold):

    

How to make it:

I printed the photoshopped picture in full size. Because I don't have a full size printer to accomodate a picture bigger than letter size or A4 format. I divided the picture in many pieces and printed them, then I reconstituted the full picture.

The most difficult step is to reproduce the picture on canvas. To do it, I perforated with a fine pencil the paper and step by step, I linked all the dots to get a pretty faithful picture on canvas. The last step is painting. I had only blue ink and was lazy and too impatient to go to the store. It turned out OK with the blue color choice.

Cost:

The canvas was less than $5 from my art store (http://www.utrechtart.com/) and if you have a computer and a printer, it's a pretty cheap project.

Conclusion:

This is a fairly simple technique with endless possibilities. The original picture itself is the only limit to the technique and using the threshold function in photoshop does not give always a good picture.