Image Transfer Painting

 The other day my friend sent me a photo of a friend of hers and asked me what sort of painting she could get for a small budget. I decided I could do an image transfer with painted details.

I started wit ha small canvas board and a printed copy of the photo in reverse. I forgot about the reverse part the first time I printed it, but that then became my reference photo.

Then I coated the canvas in an acrylic gel medium, which works the same as image maker.

This is the same technique I used with this picture.

Once the medium had dried I wetted the paper to rub it off, leaving the image behind. Unfortunately this didn't work as well as it has done in the past as some of the image started to come off as well. This just meant that I'd be doing more painting than I'd originally planned.

I think I ended up painting over everything except the ears and teeth.

I had to use acrylic paint for this as I didn't know how oil paint would react with the remaining paper.It was a bit of a challenge as I'm not used to using it for painting in a realistic style but I think it turned out all right.