Tesco value art

[Colin Sanction]

I guess we've all seen these type of pictures, they seen to be everywhere at the moment -



and i've thought i can do that and i've decided to give it a go. Browsing through Tesco yesterday, i noticed they sell a wide range of art materials, paints, canvases etc. What would you "proper" artists recommend i use to make one of these, oils, acrilycs, car spray paint etc?

Also, i've seen a lot of these type things on eBay -



How do i go about doing one of these? The way i thought was to get an image and somehow vectorize it in PSP/Photoshop etc, print it out and use one of the plastic extension pencil thingys to enlarge the image onto the canvas but how do i vectorize the image in the first place?

So many questions, so much free time! Can anyone help me out and point me in the right direction? Come on Verbwhores - make an artist of me.

Thanks
Kev.

[waste of chops]

I think the "pros" print those second images straight onto canvas but I daresay you could get decent results following a tutorial like http://www.stencilrevolution.com/tutorials/tutorialsview.php?id=6 and spraying it. Alternatively, some places will print your design onto canvas for you -- http://www.esjdesigns.co.uk/your_pictures_on_canvas2.htm was the cheapest place I found when I was Googling a few weeks ago.

[V]

You might be better off doing this sort of thing in Illustrator, using the Live Trace feature.

[Colin Sanction]

Thanks for the links Stubruise, will look into them.

Thanks also V, I've *ahem* aquired myself a copy of Illustrator and had a go at that Live Trace thing - thats the kind of thing i've been looking for, just need to play around with it a bit to get the image i need.

Any idea of what kind of paints would be best suited for canvas?

[Cardinal Tit Storm]

Any idea of what kind of paints would be best suited for canvas?

You could use anything. A lot depends on how big it's going to be. If you go with spray paint and stencils, I would suggest acrylic spray paint such as the Plastikote stuff you can get in B&Q. Or you could try house emulsion and a big brush or sponge if it's going to be a large picture, or proper 'artist's' acrylics (but that's not Tesco Value). Oil paint is more difficult to work with, and it will rot the canvas if it's not sized properly.

Make sure the canvas is primed, otherwise it will soak up a lot of paint. Cheap and nasty white emulsion works for primer, but there's a possibility your picture will flake off a few years down the line. Proper gesso primer is quite expensive. If you're using oil paint the canvas needs to be sized before it's primed. You can buy glue size in tins or make your own from powdered rabbits, which is more fun.

This page looks okay if you want more information:

http://merlin.alleg.edu/dept/art/PaintingWebSite/Technique.html