Leonland - Leon Barnard
January 06, 2008
12 in 12 update
So, it's been about a week since I started my art project. A while ago I had an idea to and I'm going to see if I can pull it off.
Step 1 was to choose a photo to use. I wanted something that was personal and meaningful to me and I knew that it had to be relatively simple in terms of colors and contain only a few objects (you'll see why soon).
After a long time perusing my iPhoto library, here's the image that I decided on. It's a picture that my wife took on one of the best days of our honeymoon at Polihale State Park in Kauai, where we camped for two nights.
Step 2 was to "vectorize" the image, that is, convert it to a series of colored shapes rather than pixels. There's an online application that does a nice job called Vector Magic.
After playing around with some settings and trying a few different crops, here's what I ended up with.
And that's pretty much where I'm at now. What I plan to do next is buy sheets of colored paper that match the colors in the vectorized image. Then I'll cut them out to match the shapes in the image and assemble them to make an enlarged version of it, kind of like paint-by-number, but with colored paper instead of paint .
Now you can see why the choice of image was so important. As it is, I'll need about 20 different shades of colored paper to recreate the image I chose. Tomorrow or the next day I'll go to an art store to try to get the paper - I wasn't able to find any paper that was big enough today.
So far it's been really cool to have a project to do, something that I can think about or work on in my spare time. But I've found that regular day-to-day activities get in the way more than I expected; I've had to make time for this project more than I anticipated. But having a goal and a deadline have been keeping me fairly on-track, so I'm optimistic about the result. I think I have a lot more work ahead of me though, I need to get that paper soon.
Posted by Leon on January 6, 2008 10:20 AM
Comments
Dude..that looks so good. My first thoughts when I say the vectorised picture was that it would be perfect for stencilling (banksy style), but I'm liking your alternative better! Keep us posted.
Posted by DavidG on January 7, 2008 08:46 AM
It's looking awesome!
Posted by shinwha on January 8, 2008 06:01 AM
you could try staining some papers with food coloring, teas, etc or bleachng to get the different tints and shades. Or maybe use magazine prints in place of a solid color. More work but more fun too. Can't wait to see it.
barb
Posted by barb on January 10, 2008 02:30 PM
A great idea for "deconstructing" and reassembling an image. This will look cool when finished. You could also print out solid color blocks from a color printer. A way to get more hues than color paper offerings. I'll be eager to see the finished product.
Posted by Jim on January 12, 2008 07:17 AM