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Faux oil canvas from photo

January 24th, 2016 No comments

I wanted a picture to hang on the wall in the newly refurbished bathroom. I like to put photos I’ve taken myself on the walls, but didn’t want a full photo quality image. Neither did I want to get one of the usual pictures of lighthouses etc. that you see for sale for bathrooms, so I decided to create my own faux-oil-painted canvas.

The effect I am going to use doesn’t work well on photos with too much detail as you lose the shapes. Landscapes do work well however, so I chose the following photo taken at Sandgreen near Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland and cropped it to a square format. Note, you should allow for an amount of image that will get ‘lost’ as it is wrapped around the side of the canvas frame. (see further down)

Sandgreen Photo

To increase the drama in the finished oil-effect, I also processed it using Google Snapseed (available on both iOS and Android). Obviously use whatever you want here, but generally push the contrast and saturation.

Sandgreen Photo processed

I then used an app called Brushstroke to apply an oil brush stroke effect. There are several options so play around with them until you get the desired result. This is better done on an iPad purely for the size of screen.

Sandgreen Photo Oil Effect

A detailed zoom on the clouds showing the oil paint effect:

oil effect detail

This was then sent it off to Snapmad to be made in to a canvas. I chose a 20″ x 20″ size, but there are plenty of other options available. Snapmad also have some very good help pages to determine image size to fit correctly onto a canvas so you understand what gets wrapped around the edges.

Here is the finished canvas on the wall.

Sandgreen Canvas