Before After
Take an ordinary digital photo and make it unique by coloring it into something else. Picasa3 is a free photo-editing program available from Google. Picasa3 (Click here to get a copy).
Here's how:
1. Load your photo into Picasa3.
2. Double click on it to select.
3. Go to the "Effects" tab and click on black and white.
4. Go to "Tuning" and push the slider for "fill light" all the way to the right to lighten the image. Optionally, push the slider for "color temperature" to the right to warm it up and give you a sense of the flow of warm and cool colors. The result will be toned so that you can see shapes easily but will be light enough to color over.
5. Print the image onto a sheet of canvas paper, marker paper, or watercolor paper. (Make sure the paper is thin enough and stiff enough to go through your ink jet printer). I use the "Artist's Loft" store brand of canvas paper pad from Michaels.
6. Use markers, colored pencils, acrylic paints or watercolors appropriate to your paper to color in the shapes you see, ignoring the subject as much as you can. Try rotating the image, anything so that you forget what "it's supposed to be". I recommend the inexpensive BIC permanent markers I got from Staples (32 colors for under $20)
7. You can be done here or send the finished product through a scanner or photograph it again, deconstruct it with Picasa3, print it again, and color some more. Enjoy the process - play.
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