DIY: Faking A Painting

Have you ever taken a picture or seen a print that you wished you could turn into a painting? This happens to me all the time, as I tend to not like all the standard paintings you find at most stores and I refuse to pay a lot of money for artwork.  A few years ago, I came up with a method of how to fake a painting. What I mean by "faking a painting" is taking an actual image, print it on a flat piece of media, and applying a coat over the top of it so it looks like a painting. To the untrained eye, it looks like a painting. 

For example, I did this technique for all of my paintings in my old living room:

Even though they might look like prints in this picture, up close they look like a painting. I have had several people ask me if I painted them. 

With that said, I was needing a few paintings in my bathroom I am remodeling and I couldn't find anything I liked in the size I needed. (A few months back, I posted how I hated our main bathroom and was in the process of trying to make it not so 1970s.) I thought I would write a little DIY on how you too can fake a painting. 

To start, you need to determine what image you are wanting to turn into a painting and apply it to a canvas. You can go several routes with this. There are many printers out there who will print directly to canvas material or you could have your image printed on decal and you could apply it yourself. The paintings in my living room were printed directly to the canvas. (Or course I work for a printing company, so it cost me nothing. You can email me and I will give you their information for printing.) 

 In the case of the paintings for my bathroom, I started with two 10-inch blank canvases and a wall decal that I found at Hobby Lobby. 

I trimmed out the images I wanted from the wall decals and applied them to the canvases. 

They weren't quite large enough for the canvas, but I will make it work. 

I took brown acrylic paint and painted a brown border around the outside of the decals to fill up the canvas. 

I ended up with two canvases that looked like this:

Next, you will need some Gloss Glaze. You can find this in the painting section of any craft store. It's clear and will give the effect of brush strokes on the painting. 

Apply the Gloss Glaze using a few different types of brushes. Paint the glaze on as if you actually painted the image. Which means, run strokes where there are different colors and use different motions, dabbing, and other painting strokes. 

Allow the glaze to dry and you should be left with two canvas prints that do a great job in being "faked" to look like a painting. (Sorry it is such a bad picture, the lighting was super bad in the room at the time. When you see what I will be using the canvases for, it's a better image on how they look like a painting.)

Usually, I wouldn't do the border, but these prints/fake paintings will be hinged to my latest storage project. Stay tuned to find out! 

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