I painted a portrait!!!!

If it's not a dream come true... it's close. No kidding, I never thought I was capable of painting a portrait of a person that would actually look like a REAL person... not to mention THE person.
And the best part is it only took me a few hours (2 evenings!)

It started with a Young Women activity we had at church over a year ago (when I was still teaching in Young Women-now I'm in primary). A woman in the YW presidency is a very talented painter and she gave the girls (and fellow-leaders) a class on water coloring. I loved it and it made me want to start my own project. Several months later I found a tutorial on Pinterest (of course) on how to turn a picture into a paint-by-number art (it's from this blog: http://theambitiousprocrastinator.blogspot.com that looks pretty cool by the way). And this week when I heard picnik was closing down (an awesome online picture editing program that's needed for this project) I decided to tackle the project (thank you picnik for closing down or I would have never done this).

So here's my very own tutorial for an awesome looking super easy portrait painting:

Step 1: Choose a picture with a simple background (not too many details). Edit the picture in Picnik or another editing software (I think Picasa would work). Blur out the background (using the Soften effect) and apply the posterize effect, set the detail at 0% and the number of colors as low as possible, or as low as you like (mine was 9 colors I think).

The picture before editing:

The picture after editing and printing on paper:

Step 2: Place a sheet of carbon paper (carbon face down) between the picture and the canvas you want to transfer the picture onto. Trace the different sections over the picture with a hard pencil.

Step 3: Uncover your canvas and retrace over the lines that are too faded if necessary.

Step 4: The fun part. Mix your colors and start filling in.

Keep the paper picture (or digital version) for color reference (or pick the colors randomly... could be fun too!)

And Tada! It would be clever to spray it with clear acrylic coating... but I haven't done it yet.

It is so easy a kid could do it. Actually I've seen a fun version for kids here. Except instead of turning the picture into a paint-by-number you turn it into a coloring sheet. Might do that for Josh when/if he starts being more interested in coloring.