Personalised Watercolour Painting from a Photo

Personalised Watercolour Painting from a Photo

How can I turn a photo into a watercolour painting?

There are two approaches to this; hiring an artist to physically paint a picture based on a photograph or to use a modern digital effect to convert the photo to a digital painting. As you might image the first option is going to be more costly as the artist’s time will be spent creating the painting, perhaps many hours. But these days the digital option is really very realistic, the image below for example shows a close-up of a portion of a photo converted to watercolour by Turned Art.


Apps and filters are also an option these days for making a photo like a painting, but completely automated apps and filters can only go so far, the results may look OK on a tiny mobile screen but zoom in and you’ll see they don’t look so good close-up and won’t when printed out either. To really create a quality outcome a human touch is required to crop the photo, enhance it’s lighting and colour saturation and then to adjust the watercolour effect in key areas such as faces where any strange effects would be really noticeable. We always recommend a graphic designer be involved if you want something you’ll be proud to hang on your wall.

Personalised Watercolour Canvas

Fine art paper prints can look great but canvas adds texture to a painting which we really love. The option to print on canvas as well as framed prints gives you the all the options to choose from, frames and paper prints or canvas (or framed canvas too) it’s a personal preference.

Canvas watercolour portraits:

 personalised watercolour picture canvas

Personalised Watercolour Pet Painting

It’s not just humans who look good as a watercolour painting, don’t forget your pets too. We love our cats and dogs and they deserve a place on your wall too! Pet portraits are very popular and you’re sure to have a cute photo on your phone already so there’s no need to think about posing them for a professional photo shoot because the background can be removed when converted to watercolour.

Pet Portrait:

 watercolour Pet portrait

Watercolour Personalised Wedding Print

A watercolour print as a gift for weddings and anniversaries are ideal. These are landmark events and commemorations so a photo from the wedding or a group of family and friends will record that moment forever. A photo printed and framed can look great, but to give it that painterly and timeless quality the feel of a painting can be far superior and timeless.

Watercolour Personalised Wedding Photo:

Watercolour Personalised Wedding Print

Sizes and Mounts

Size matters when it comes to wall art, you need to take into consideration the room where it will hang or the mantelpiece where it will sit and choose appropriately. A stunning photo converted to watercolour portrait deserves plenty of space and to be visible from across the room, so for a statement piece we recommend 18x24” (45x60cm) or the larger 24x32” (60x80cm) to really stand out. A further refinement is to add a mount into the frame, these white borders around the image give it a higher quality and classy feel, you see mounts on all images in high end galleries.

Frames and Quality of Materials

You’ll be walking past your watercolour portrait everyday in your house so don’t skimp on the quality of the materials including the frame or you’ll be regretting it everyday. We love a wooden frame to outline the image and set it apart from the surrounding wall, black is great for a contrasty look but white can also look great for a softer prettier image. We also love the results when using one of our antique gold or antique silver frames which bring a flash of colour and glitz to your image.

quality wooden frames for your watercolour portraits

Turned Art specialise is creating digital watercolour effect portraits from a photo, browse our framed print or canvas options and sign up to our newsletter to get your welcome discount code. Get Started now.