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

[jnantz]

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!

good luck!

[kasperbergholt]

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.

Thank you for your reply - the 2D vs 3D is good point. I'm not sure oil-based varnish will stick to the print (which I assume is made with water-based paint), but it's worth a shot.

Yesterday I tried with a test print which I added a bit of chlorine to to try and break the sealing - for about 10 minutes. Then I added som salt and later a bit of very bitter tea and let everything dry in the sun.

Today I've added some raw linseed oil to see if it sticks. If it does, adding oil-based varnish (e.g. dammar varnish) on top should work, I think. And perhaps multiple layers over time. The linseed oil takes around a week to dry up.

[xkaes]

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

This a kinda, sorta what I do with transparent watercolors on B&W prints -- this example (not mine) is WAY over the top for my taste.

[Tin Can]

Today I harvested Goldenrod from my porch

Father hated it and always destroyed it

It is good for many things, as I learned today

My tiny Bees swarmed it

The bright yellow is good for paper dye

Also saw a tiny purple Monarch butterfly, very rare

Goldenrod by TIN CAN COLLEGE, on Flickr

[kasperbergholt]

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

Thank you for the recommendation

[kasperbergholt]

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.

Interesting approach! Do you know if she used oil-based or water-based paint?

[jnantz]

you can paint on your images using encaustic paints too. it is a mixture of paint and wax that is brushed on.
it might be a trouble free solution that can be done right onto your pigment print without the hassle of learning
how to do liquid emulsion, or a 19th century process. ( its not hard and lots of info on you tube )
I think the starn twins are doing their encaustic work onto of pigment / modern prints but I'm not exactly sure...

Do you know the work of Emil Schildt? He is a photographer from Denmark who used liquid emulsion, made cyanotypes,
did gumoils, bromoils and other things. His work had a painterly quality to it that you might find interesting. The Bromoil process converts a photographic print
into a "matrix" whose surface is "worked" and inks are brushed onto. It is not a digital process ( you can't do this with a glicée print ).
Gene Laughter was a Master of this type of image making https://www.alternativephotography.c...ter-1932-2017/
I am not sure how rare his videos are but they might be worth looking into. Emil is still around, I am not sure if he is still making them
he used liquid emulsion, so he did not have the problem of hunting around for "the right paper" (not super coated) because he pretty much made his own photo paper with liquid emulsion.

his books sometimes have instructions on how you can do these things on your own
(not the encaustic painting but the other stuff ) .. they are available on BLURB.
( I tried to post a link but it didn't let me just search blurb 's bookstore for Emil Schildt )

[Larry Gebhardt]

Or like https://www.saulleiterfoundation.org/painted-photos

[Tin Can]

Like!

I call his work

Real Art!

Or like https://www.saulleiterfoundation.org/painted-photos

[Pieter]

Please don't.