I have a slight obsession with art that combines hand drawn and digital formats. Pretty much anything by Nan Lawson makes me sigh and stare longingly. Artists impress me more than anyone, but sad to say, a true artist I am not. I’ve been meaning to save up for a portrait in this style, maybe a picture of Josh and I on our wedding day. Anyway, I was bored the other day and decided to try and draw a [very interpretive] self portrait. Here is what that turned out to look like:

doodle doodle doodley

So anyway, I realized that I could technically take that into photoshop and mess around with it, because we have a scanner and photoshop on Josh’s computer. So, I scanned in the photo.

scanned

Next  and deleted out all the white space with the magic wand tool. (make sure contiguous is not selected). Now I was down to just the pen marks. I selected all, and added a stoke to thicken the lines. Then it was time to color! Now, you do not need to have Photoshop to do this. I think it may have been more fun to use colored pencils, but I couldn’t find any at the time.

layers

I added a layer for each aspect of the picture, keeping the pen marks as the top layer so I could technically just color right over them.

colored in

This was such a fun and easy craft, I think it would be perfect for a date night; draw each other.

it’s me…sort of

the note

Anyway, it printed rather small, because it scanned in at 72 dpi, but I don’t mind. I printed it out, added a note and left it for Josh on his computer in the office.

What’s your favorite style of art? Have you tried a DIY?
xoxo,
Adora