Photo by Anastasia Marie

I’ve been doing some painting in my studio lately. I’m putting together a new set of notecards for my shop, and I while I was at it, I put together a post for you on how to mass-produce your own painted cards.

The print I’m going to show you is one of my “play” designs as I was learning how oil paints work. But it turned out pretty fun, nonetheless.

Directions

Step 1: Squeeze a bit of paint on top of your paper and smear that paint down your page with your scrap paper. Change out your colors and repeat the process until you get your rainbow. The rougher your paper, the more textured your painting will look.

Step 2: Snap a few shots of your painting (from up above) with a good digital camera. Make sure your lighting is plentiful; it helps to turn off all fluorescent lights and place your painting right next to natural light coming in through a window.

Step 3: Import your images into Photoshop and adjust the colors and white balance as desired. Choose the best one.

Step 4: Create a file in Photoshop or InDesign in the size of card you want. Place your image as desired, and print on super smooth white paper. And just for fun, you can download and print my version of the card here if you’d like!