Making a photo look and feel like an oil painting - possible?

[kasperbergholt]

Clever people,


I'm working on a project titled Flora Excursoria Hafniensis where I'd like to transform giclée printed large-format photos into looking like oil paintings from around 1848 - towards the end of the Romantic period.

Perhaps using acid, chlorine, natural or synhetic wax, shellac, other types of varnish, linseed oil, bees' wax, etc.

I think the protective layer of the print needs to be removed gently and if possible non-intrusively to the colour pigments of the print, but a certain blur might be okay and perhaps also add to the illusion.

After that I'm thinking of adding layers of varnish, perhaps some formula that was used in the 1850s.

I've tried having oil paitings made based on digital files in China by companies specialized in copying e.g. some of the big French painters - e.g. Monét. It never turned out very well, sadly.

Looking forward to getting your inputs.

Thanks

[xkaes]

One way is to paint a canvas with white oil paint -- in whatever way you want. You could use the enlarged image onto the canvas to place the brush strokes. Then let it fully dry, and coat it with LIQUID EMULSION, or something similar. Then expose it normally under the enlarger and process it. That's only good for B&W, however -- but you could easily add color with transparent watercolors to some or all of the image. It would be more even striking than a normal B&W photo with color added -- which I often do.

I have no idea about the longevity of brushed on emulsions.

[jnantz]

before printing images on canvas people used to do an emulsion peel and glue it to your backing (canvas, board &c ) you might consider making a few prints and seeing if crumpling and then ironing and dry mounting the image ( once it is peeled ) helps add wanted texture before gluing it. I would also suggest printing right onto your canvas and then doing your brush strokes of your top coat on that, it will look ( and work ) better.

[added later]
I am not sure how much of a enlarge or contact print with light sensitive materials your project might be, or what your "alt process" experience might be, but you could always make a series enlarged color separation negatives the size of your final print, and make a color gum print. That's how a project like yours would have been done 100 years ago. You could put the gum over a cyanotype, silver print, or any kind of other image, or use the gum by itself. You will have brush strokes from the application of the gum, pigment and sensitizer &c. Christopher James and Christine Anderson's books detail how this can be done, and they are readily available through AMAzON. Alternativephotography.com also has information if you can't find the books.

[Graham Patterson]

Part of the character of an oil painting is the depth of the paint on the canvas which leads to micro shadows, and how the colours are blended. The only way I can see to do this would be to apply an oil paint varnish, possibly thinned, and maybe dry it with localized hot air to induce some texture. It won't be perfect even then, as the varnish surface is going to be above the colour image, and you won't have the paint texture beneath the varnish.

There is a Photoshop filter to emulate an oil painting (what a surprise). You might try that and then varnish the print.

It is interesting trying to make a 2D rendering appear to be what is essentially a 3D rendering. I'll be intrigued by the final result.

[xkaes]

...apply an oil paint varnish,...

Good idea -- just try clear, unpigmented, oil-paint on a B&W or COLOR print. Makes sense to me. Worth a try.

[Mark Sampson]

When I made high-school senior portraits for a living, the large studio where I worked employed a "portrait artist". This woman used the traditional method of taking a large b/w portrait print, printed lightly on warm-tone matte paper, and painted in the color. The b/w print was used only for rendering the sitter's outline, and the results were surprisingly effective. Even in 1980 that was a seriously old-school technique- of course it pre-dated color film by many years. It was expensive, but she was always busy (at least when I was in the studio). So that's a time-honored method of making a photograph "look and feel like an oil painting"- turn it into one.

[Tin Can]

That explains why my very expensive 8X10 HS "Portrait" looks nothing like me!

And I have the prints to prove it

The 35mm Kodachrome shot in our kitchen same time, no flash

I had a lot of non hippy hair

When I made high-school senior portraits for a living, the large studio where I worked employed a "portrait artist". This woman used the traditional method of taking a large b/w portrait print, printed lightly on warm-tone matte paper, and painted in the color. The b/w print was used only for rendering the sitter's outline, and the results were surprisingly effective. Even in 1980 that was a seriously old-school technique- of course it pre-dated color film by many years. It was expensive, but she was always busy (at least when I was in the studio). So that's a time-honored method of making a photograph "look and feel like an oil painting"- turn it into one.

[kasperbergholt]

One way is to paint a canvas with white oil paint -- in whatever way you want. You could use the enlarged image onto the canvas to place the brush strokes. Then let it fully dry, and coat it with LIQUID EMULSION, or something similar. Then expose it normally under the enlarger and process it. That's only good for B&W, however -- but you could easily add color with transparent watercolors to some or all of the image. It would be more even striking than a normal B&W photo with color added -- which I often do.

I have no idea about the longevity of brushed on emulsions.

Thank you for the inputs, xkaes.

The plan is to work on a giclée print sized 200 x 140 centimeters, so I'm afraid your method doesn't apply for the this use-case. But it would be interesting to try for another project.

Would love to see some of your work & thanks again

[kasperbergholt]

before printing images on canvas people used to do an emulsion peel and glue it to your backing (canvas, board &c ) you might consider making a few prints and seeing if crumpling and then ironing and dry mounting the image ( once it is peeled ) helps add wanted texture before gluing it. I would also suggest printing right onto your canvas and then doing your brush strokes of your top coat on that, it will look ( and work ) better.

[added later]
I am not sure how much of a enlarge or contact print with light sensitive materials your project might be, or what your "alt process" experience might be, but you could always make a series enlarged color separation negatives the size of your final print, and make a color gum print. That's how a project like yours would have been done between 100 years ago. You could put the gum over a cyanotype, silver print, or any kind of other image, or use the gum by itself. You will have brush strokes from the application of the gum, pigment and sensitizer &c. Christopher James and Christine Anderson's books detail how this can be done, and they are readily available through AMAzON. Alternativephotography.com also has information if you can't find the books.

Great thoughts, jnantz, thanks! It was exactly suggestions like these I am after. I didn't know the 'The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes', but will try and get it from my local library right away!

[Tin Can]

Alternative photographic processes: A resource manual for the artist, photographer, craftsperson
by Kent E Wade

Just bought used

$6.28 USD shipped

Books are cheap and very low shipping