Mr. CraftyPaws had another large wall to fill at his office, so this time I thought I’d create a composite canvas piece that was totally personalized with something we cherish — our dogs (but this can be done for cats, children — just about anything that has a distinctive form).<\/p>\n

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I got three large (22″ x 28″) canvases<\/a><\/span> when Michaels had their 70% off sale (they often have buy 3 for the price of 1 OR you can use their ever present 40% or 50% off any regularly priced item) and a super value pack of smaller (9″ x 12″) canvases<\/a><\/span> when they were 50% off.<\/p>\n

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Then I used Liquitex white gesso<\/a><\/span> on all of them to prep them to accept acrylic paint (BTW, for darker color canvases I ended up using DecoArt black gesso<\/a><\/span> rather than white for better\/easier coverage).<\/p>\n

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Then I found 3 pictures of our dogs (our 2 and my sister’s 1) that I thought would make good silhouettes. I loaded them into a free program called Block Posters<\/a><\/span> to blow them up and break them up so they could be printed out on standard 8.5″ x 11″ printer paper.\u00a0Then I painstakingly fussy cut out each segment with my hand-saving Fiskars spring loaded scissors<\/a><\/span>. For images that are less textured (like smooth coated dogs or cats), this step could be super quick, but mine took several hours.<\/p>\n

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Next I used standard invisible tape to piece each segment together. This created the masks that would be the silhouettes for each large canvas. Note that I veered from the actual images in some cases because as silhouettes some of the photographic details (like bits of tail showing or gaps in fur) aren’t easily recognized. I think the lack of photographic context and the two dimensional aspect of silhouettes requires them to be simplified to come across easily. HINT: I think profiles are easier to recognize than front-facing images unless the image has distinctive front facing attributes (like a French Bulldogs’ ears).<\/p>\n

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I used temporary glue dots<\/a><\/span> to secure the large masks onto the canvases so they wouldn’t shift during the painting process, and these were really easy to rub off afterwards. Then it was a matter of picking colors for each canvas. You could use spray paint for this step, but I had a bucket full of acrylic paints so I mixed up and used various of these (ranging from Craftsmart to Winsor & Newton acrylic paints<\/a><\/span>) from my stash.<\/p>\n

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Starting from on top of the mask and brushing the paint outward seemed to work well for getting a clean crisp silhouette. I went around each mask once and that seemed to be enough for the lighter canvases (purple and pink) but for the darker blue one I had to go around twice for better opaque coverage. Then before the paint fully dried (about 15 minutes), I carefully pulled off the masks. Lastly, with a small detailed paint brush, I was able to touch up the few areas where the paint had seeped under the mask with Winsor & Newton titanium white acrylic paint<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0HINT: To minimize under mask seepage, I’d recommend not over-loading your paint brush with paint and also holding the brush close to 90 degrees from your canvas when applying the paint.<\/p>\n

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To create the whole composite piece, I also painted five of the smaller canvases with solid colors that I thought would coordinate with the three large silhouette canvases. I liked the effect of the color blocking (an homage to Mondrian’s work?), and I thought these smaller pops of color would brighten up the office.<\/p>\n

The following is a step by step tutorial video of how to create silhouette canvas wall art:<\/p>\n