Furry Friend Portraits
Every year for Christmas I hand-make all my gifts, usually the same gift for everyone. This year I decided to do something a little different for my parents, something that I knew they would really appreciate and enjoy. With our family dogs slowly getting older I thought it would be a great idea to paint portraits of them on canvas! I recently did the same for my own dogs while enjoying a trip to one of my favorite places, Painting with a Twist! I opted for a smaller canvas than my PWAT portraits, and luckily I still had plenty of acrylic paint and tools left over from all my art classes I've been taking for school. They turned out great and my parents love them!
HOW TO:
Materials-
Canvas of any size
Acrylic Paint
Paint brushes
Photo of furry friend
Pencil
Copy Paper
Frame (optional)
I'm not the greatest artist, especially when it comes to drawing, so I took it old school and decided to take my photos, enlarge them to a size that fits the canvas and print out the pictures. Use a pencil to fill the back of that paper with lead (this will be used instead of carbon based paper). Place the paper photo side up on your canvas and trace the image. When you are done you will have a pencil lined drawing of your photo on the canvas. If you are good at drawing, go ahead and draw directly on the canvas. I wanted to make sure my proportions were perfect so I traced instead.
Go ahead and start painting!
I decided to frame the canvas, but you can skip that part, but just make sure to paint your edges to give it a finished look!
Helpful Tip:
If you aren't the greatest painter you can take your photo into an editing program, such as Photoshop. By adding a filter, such as poster edges, you can start to separate the colors into their basic shapes to create more of a paint by number look. Sometimes printing the photo in black and white also helps.
Don't forget to sign and date your masterpiece! :)
