I've received numerous questions concerning my method of transferring my images to canvas. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about showing this. I've heard of artistry being compared to magic: once the secret is revealed, the trick holds no more interest. My fear was that I'd lose the interest of my audience by revealing too much... lose the magic as it were. But in the end I wanted to go full monty, be thoroughly honest and reveal it all and so far it seems to have drummed up a little more interest actually. So might as well continue on and answer the question, here goes...
Transferring is really the most "trick" like element of painting...every other part really does take a lot of skill talent and practice, but this one part can be done by anyone. I've had a number of people offer up their hypothesis of how I do it and what they see on the video, often involving very large expensive printers and highly sophisticated paper. But the answer is much less impressive, and much more accessible than that.
First I use photoshop to size the image to match my wood panel. I then break up the image into a bunch of 8" x 10" pieces using photoshop or a free poster printing program called "Proposter", print each onto regular printer paper with a regular printer. I then cut off all the edges, line them up and tape them together to make a full scale copy of the image. I tape large sheets of graphite paper to my prepped panel (obviously graphite side facing the panel). The graphite paper itself is nothing special and can be purchased at any craft or art supply store, it is never the size you want, so you end up using multiple sheets...but it is reusable. Then I tape the printed image down onto that. I use a pencil and trace over all the lines on the image that I need. If the graphite paper does it's job, when I remove all the paper I'll see that I have successfully transferred the image....voi-la!
Usually I use this method if the piece is fairly small (say 2 feet square), or I'm going to need to paint layers that will need the image re-transferred multiple times (I then keep the image taped on the top of the canvas and flip it back when I don't need it there, or flip it forward when I need grab an element of the image). If my project is fairly large, and doesn't need multiple transfers, I use a digital projector I bought for that purpose, and trace the projected image.
Back in the day I used to use the gridding method of image transfer (drawing matching scaled grids on canvas and photograph, as a way of simplifying and giving reference when you draw the image), but to be honest it was a slow arduous process, and I'm far too busy for that now. Before gridding of course, I would free hand draw the image, but that went away a long time ago due to time constraints and, let's be honest, I'm not in college anymore, I don't have to prove to anyone that I can draw ...I know that I can draw, you know that I can draw, and I know that you know that I can draw, thus I can stop proving it and spend time and energy on more important things (like concept, color, style, composition, etc).
Good luck!
