Image Transfer to Altered Canvas Project…

I haven’t posted in two days. I have been in learn and create mode, delving into the world of mixed media altered art. You should see my workspace – yikes. I like to wait until I have a finished piece to share with you, but this kind of work entails a lot of letting the canvas dry overnight before moving on to the next layer. Yeah, I am kinda glad I didn’t realize this fact beforehand. It probably would have deterred me, and I am learning much for this creative frenzy. Today I will share what I have learned about transferring images to canvas, as well as some AMAZING resources that I can’t believe I have lived this long without! Here is the image transfer part of my current altered canvas project…

I opened it in photoshop and made it into a stencil through a series of steps I won’t go into here, but you’ll find tons of tutorials if you google. Here is the final black and white I came up with…

I skipped over tutorials that used contact paper because it just didn’t sound legit to me for some reason. A few cracks at other methods humbled me and I became open to anything. I turns out, contact paper is my current favorite method (i.e. the only one I have gotten to work). Here is a tutorial describing this easy process. I did a few things differently than Karen did. Namely, I didn’t wait a couple of hours like she describes in step 6. I was way to impatient by this point. After burnishing the image to the contact paper with a bone folder, I lightly sanded the back of my image to break up the paper of my photocopy, then moistened the paper backing with a water spray bottle. Using my fingers, I rubbed off the wet paper with my fingers. The ink pretty well stayed on the contact paper. I did smudge it a bit in my eagerness to get this done, but you can’t tell in the end. It goes along with the distress look just fine. Easy. Some people don’t like this option because of the cloudiness in the transfer cause by the contact paper, but I am fine with it. I will be playing around with other techniques for the fun of it. Obsessed with altered canvases at the moment!