{"id":130,"date":"2006-04-10T18:14:10","date_gmt":"2006-04-10T23:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.imheavyduty.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2018-11-16T17:17:25","modified_gmt":"2018-11-17T00:17:25","slug":"thumbtack-portrait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/2006\/thumbtack-portrait\/","title":{"rendered":"Thumbtack Mosaic Portrait"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/maxtacksbig.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-543\" title=\"Thumbtack Mosaic Portrait\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/maxtacks.jpg\" alt=\"Thumbtack Mosaic Portrait\" width=\"500\" height=\"674\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is something I&#8217;ve wanted to try for a long time. The idea of using mundane objects to create something more interesting was calling me. I didn&#8217;t want to use &#8220;found&#8221; objects and put them into a new context, such as using a piece of machinery as a component in a piece of furniture. I&#8217;ve done that enough. This time, I wanted to use objects in their proper context, but in a way that was unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>Below is a picture of my friends&#8217; son Max. Step away from the monitor about ten feet to see the image really come together. Thumbtacks were used on a cork bulletin board, where they feel right at home, to create a low resolution portrait. This is <a href=\"http:\/\/kerah.com\/2005nov\/hawaii.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">the source image I used<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"steps\">One way to do it:<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Open the source image in your favorite graphic editing software and reduce it to the needed resolution. For this example it was 35&#215;49, pretty rough.<\/li>\n<li>Decide on color palette\/Source the tacks. This was tough because most stores don&#8217;t have thousands of tacks just sitting in the aisles. I want to try push pins too, but thumbtacks just had a pleasing tactile quality (once they&#8217;re installed that is) so I had to do that. I was going to use the standard primary color, vinyl covered tacks. Then, Mary found these at the variety store down the street. I really liked the colors and I walked down there and bought every pack they had. Still wasn&#8217;t enough.<\/li>\n<li>Get the colors into the computer. I decided to scan them because photos can be a pain with highlights, shadows. Once I had the scan I picked the most representative color I could find from each tack.<\/li>\n<li>Create a custom palette using those colors. This may not be easy, depends on the software you&#8217;re using.<\/li>\n<li>Apply the palette and season to taste. In Photoshop you can manipulate the Diffusion, Pattern, and Noise options to get something that looks more interesting. For this pic of Max I wanted it diffused enough that when you are standing close by it&#8217;s a little hard to see.<\/li>\n<li>Layout the tacking pattern on the bulletin board. Most tacks, including push pins will do well spaced on 7\/16 inch centers. I won&#8217;t recommend the way I did it. If you come up with something efficient please let me know by commenting here.<\/li>\n<li> Scale up the image, say 15X, and maybe overlay a grid to make it easier to follow. Print out the image if you won&#8217;t be working next to the screen.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s pretty much it. I&#8217;ll just say that it took a lot longer than it looks. I had it probably 75% done and had to start over because it looked blah. Lesson learned: crank up the contrast. I was also running out of tacks in a few colors. Adjusting the contrast helped but I still had to fake a lot of it at the end. And you know that gratifying sensation when you push a tack, the cork yields, and you feel it stick? Well, that goes away entirely after the first few hundred. This portrait has 1,715.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to do a small number more and then move on to something different. Grandmas unite! Put down your cross stitch, your needlepoint, and buy some tacks!<\/p>\n<p>Detail of the eye area&#8230; looks like nothing, right?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/maxtacksdetail.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-545\" title=\"Thumbtack Mosaic Portrait Detail\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/maxtacksdetail.jpg\" alt=\"Thumbtack Mosaic Portrait Detail\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is something I&#8217;ve wanted to try for a long time. The idea of using mundane objects to create something more interesting was calling me. I didn&#8217;t want to use &#8220;found&#8221; objects and put them into a new context, such as using a piece of machinery as a component in a piece of furniture. I&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[348,353],"tags":[9,446,406],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-handmade","category-tracy","tag-art","tag-handmade","tag-mosaic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3571,"href":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/3571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tracysigler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}