papa's hat

Between our vacation to Frankfort last year and the recent trip to Myrtle Beach, I've been very inspired by the beach. When we returned from Frankfort, I added white linen window treatments and made new slip covers for the furniture .... the color of the ocean.

Now it was time to think about new art. 

This was a picture I took of Matthew at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. He was intimidated by the ocean waves and wouldn't go near the water, but he had fun with the sun, sand and water from the bucket.

After I got back from the Myrtle Beach trip, I finished this almost done painting for the art portion of my beach theme for the living room.

Then I began my second painting, inspired by this picture of Matthew.

I printed off the picture on this great little photo printer.

OK, it's a little blurry, but it's a Canon Selphy CP900. I absolutely love this thing! It's wireless and uses a heat to transfer the ink to the paper, so no more ink drying out before you can use it. The color is amazing and the photos turn out spectacular. I printed out the photo so I can use it as reference during the painting process.

I transferred the photo to this little projector I bought Holly a few years ago for her birthday. She never uses it and I snatched it up for painting. It's great for projecting photos onto my canvases. There's more about this product during my blog post here.

I wait until night so the picture is very clear without the sunlight washing parts of it out. I adjust the projector so it fills the canvas. Using my pencil, I draw the outline.

The next morning I got set on blocking in the canvas with mostly neutral colors. I used a piece of masking tape to paint the distinction between the water and sand and then blended it a bit.

The sand and water, I went ahead and used the right color values.

The body and buckets I used light, medium and dark neutral tones just to get the color values in place. I let it set for about a week before I could find time to return to it.

Bringing out my arsenal of supplies, I got to work.

And finished up with the right color values.

I really love how well it came out. It'll have a prime spot in my living room. What I really appreciated about this painting is just how well it came together. Quick too. There was less time thinking about values and composition. Within a week, and I'm done. Sometimes when I paint, I'm not always sure when I'm done. I agonize and criticize over the composition and my skills. This time .... I knew I was done.

The memory of this moment brings me happiness.

transfer images to canvas

I searched and searched trying to figure out a good way to transfer my photos to a canvas for my painting hobby. I not only wanted to transfer the photos but also to enlarge them. Here's two solutions I came up with, just using things I already had.

First thing I tried was using several version of tracing paper and my laptop. I used the Palette paper for the actual tracing from my laptop screen. And then the seamstress tracing paper to put it on the canvas.

I enlarged the picture by using my zoom until I got it to the desired size. For larger photos, you'll have to trace in sections.

Just use your mouse to position the photo to the next section without touching the zoom.

And trace away! I would match up the drawing lines to do the next section.

Then transfer the image onto the canvas using the seamstress tracing paper. The image will come through light, but you can go over it again with pencil. And it worked just fine, but I thought - there's got to be a better way.

During my searches many suggested to use a projector. I have a big projector at work, but it was going to be difficult to find time during work to transfer images.

Then I remembered I had bought this neat little video camera for my daughter's birthday when she turned 13. It's a 3M Shoot and Share camcorder. She wanted to do videos. I believe I paid about $100.00.  I think what I liked most about it was that after she shot the video she could project the video on the wall, on the tables, on her hand.

It has a slot for a micro SD card. I bought her a 64 gig card to store her movies on. Being a decent video camera - it also did still shots. She used it all of a day and it was banned to the techno junk drawer - Until ....

We got a tripod with the camcorder. I popped my photo on the SD card, attached it to the projector, and VOILA! Super awesome! I think this is the best yet. And the cool things was that I already had all these tools and didn't have to invest in anything else.