Make your child a Sports Star with personalized paintings

This was my first tutorial on my personal blog. I love it so much I wanted to share with you in case you didn't see it on my personal blog.

This is a really fun and cool way of making art and portraits of your children. I took pictures of my son from a soccer game that I thought the outlines looked good. When I was looking through my pictures, I found that the best ones were when he was not moving. I took the background away and played with some layers in photoshop. I found a picture of a soccer ball that I liked and put some layers together. (Net in background, his outline/silhouette, a word layer OR watermark soccer balls, words, his outline/silhouette etc..) But you can start with a sketch by tracing the outline of your kid in a picture...or just wing it which is something I usually do;)Here is one of the three *sketch* or mock up images I did. The blur is where his name went.

1. Start with a good old movie in the DVD. I used a Jane Austin movie, but you can choose what you prefer.
2. Paint your canvas. I was careful not to cover it completely. I wanted it to look rustic or funky. I made sure to use a very dry brush and very little paint.

3. I printed off my *sketch* and cut the pieces up.
4. Trace the background objects on the canvas with some transfer paper. Transfer paper may also be known as graphite paper or carbon paper etc.
5. Paint the background objects by using your transferred designs as your guide.

This is what it looked like with the image transferred and then painted. I wanted the background to look painted and kind of watermark-ish.

6. Paint a layer of words like All Star and Soccer and his name.

7. Transfer the outline of the person. I again just used transfer paper to do it.

8. Paint in the outline. Think of how you want it to look. I had to leave some unpainted areas right next to my lines for definition otherwise I would have just had a total outline. I also wanted some detail left in.

9. Paint in your person. I went over it a few times to get it dark enough. I know that you can mask the image off before you even start painting, so you don't have to deal with layers and layers of paint. I just painted layers on top of layers.

**If you can't find transfer paper, you can do it the old fashioned way. Rub the back side of your paper that you are transferring with pencil or chalk. Then turn the image right side up (with the chalk or pencil side directly on top of your project) and draw on the lines of your image. It will transfer the image to your project.

And here are my three completed paintings. I like the idea of using their own pictures to decorate their rooms and not some sport player that isn't really a good role model off the field.

~~Anjeanette