Turn Photos Into Canvas Drawings

An example of PSP's Art Media Effects transformation...

Last year, I posted about how some people — okay, it was my other half — need to be coaxed into being a more thoughtful gift giver.

For those who are curious, the challenge has remained an active discussion in our household. With a pandemic having affected various gift giving occasions over the past year and a half, I kept saying "don't bother" while the other half kept insisting that he wanted to keep up with the tradition.

It's been maddening, to be honest.

While I was not and am not forced to participate, I literally went to the drawing board to create my next gift for him.

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My hubby owns a vintage muscle car. It predates me in terms of being the love of his life. Over the years, I've made several comments about perhaps drawing it for him, only to come to the realization that I'm not likely to do so... at least not any time soon.

Instead, I hatched the brilliant idea to use Paint Shop Pro's Effects | Art Media Effects | Colored Pencil... transformation tool on a photo to simulate the effect of a drawing. My plan would then be to transfer the image onto canvas and mount it.

Here's how the transformation looks with a picture of my Voilà Vase.

Picture of Voila Vase transformed into a pencil drawing...

There are other options that simulate charcoal, brush strokes and chalk, but they did not produce the look I wanted. In fact, the only other option that I would have considered was Black Pencil — because that's the closest to how I draw — but I figured that if I was going to stoop to a simulation, why not make it more vibrant?

Transformed pic of my fabric plate & fortune cookies...

Here's another example showing my fabric plate filled with fortune cookies. Don't you just love the resulting textured look? (This gives me the idea to use this technique on a future fabric design.)

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After transforming my chosen photos to the desired level of detail, the next step was to drop by my local Dollarama to check out the size of their (blank, white) art canvases. The biggest ones in stock were 24" x 18", with a $4 price tag.

That seemed almost perfect, because a fat quarter of Spoonflower's linen cotton canvas is sized at 27" wide by 18" high. By working with the white border that always surrounds each piece, I felt certain that I could "stretch" a fat quarter onto one of those $4 art canvases, which I subsequently went out and purchased.

My three transformed pictures...

In the meantime, I formatted my photo drawings to a size of 27" x 18" with a white border and uploaded them to Spoonflower. And waited for a sale.

In early July (actually, every July), Spoonflower ran one of their BOGO fat quarter sales. My price — with designer discount and in Canadian dollars— was $6.75 each. With a $3 shipping charge, total price for this gift of three pieces of "art" is going to be $35.85, taxes in.

Thoughtful and cheap, can you beat that?? Didn't think so.

For the record, these are a few of my (and his) favourite photos of the car. Aren't they beautifully staged?

These were taken in Penticton and Naramata — in the Southern Okanagan area of British Columbia — many years ago. This year, much of the province to the north and south of that area is/has been burning up with wildfires. It has been an absolutely horrific summer for people in BC, and — overused as the term is — sadly indicative of a new normal going forward.

The reality is, both COVID and climate change are going to make our next trip there very different.   (︶︹︺)

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But, stepping away from the gloom and doom... here's a closeup of one of the actual fabric panels, showing the transformation in greater detail.

Were I to draw this for real, I would have focused on the front corner like this...

Of course, I assume you're curious about what the finished pieces look like mounted onto the frames.

All I did was "stretch" the canvas around the frames (which of course, already had a canvas on them), using push pins to hold the panels in position temporarily. A hot glue gun was my final tool of choice. One could, of course, use a staple gun, but would have to be careful to avoid the spots where the existing canvas has already been stapled in.

Totally pleased with how these turned out! (And they were a hit with the recipient too!)

In my case, I would have had to ask the other half for a staple gun — I quite honestly don't even know if we have one — which would have been hard to explain.

But can you imagine a portrait of someone special done up like this for a gift? If so, check out what you can do with GIMP, the open source (free) graphics program comparable to PhotoShop. One of the filters that you can apply turns a photo into an oil painting... there's even an excellent YouTube video that shows you how.

Interested in other projects that you can make by uploading your designs to Spoonflower? Check out this post where I originally featured the idea of making your own custom canvas art.

'Til next...