DIY Photo Canvas

Today is Bruce Lipton's birthday. I wanted to do something special for him, as well as to honor his friendship with the recently departed Wayne Dyer. I took this photo:

And turned it into this:

Here's how I did it:

1. Print out photo.
2. Cut out the background, so it's just Bruce and Wayne.
3. Print out really cool photo of stars that the Space Hubble telescope took.
4. Secure figures onto spacey background and get a color copy at the office supply store.
5. Apply matte gel medium to a canvas, let dry over night. 
6. Wet the paper surface with water; I took a very wet washcloth and soaked the paper. It looked like this:

 7. Rubbed paper off:

Until you get this:

But then it dried to reveal more paper!

 So I wet it again and used my finger to remove the last bits of paper:

8. Painted the rest of the canvas:

I will say that my first attempt at this was with skipping the color copying and just using my jet printer. It was okay, but I rubbed most of Wayne's hat off, and the whole thing lacked definition. So I'm keeping this one!

The second try (not pictured) was a color copy, but I tried to wrap it around the whole canvas. It just turned into a gooey mess and the paper tore because of the staples and folds of the canvas. So the third time was the charm!

I chose the Cosmos-galaxy background because in Bruce's first talk with Wayne, he made a Carl Sagan reference. Also, I thought it was fitting, since now Wayne is in the heavens. :-) 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRUCE!!!  :-)