Turning Games into Art

Before this project the most extravagant piece of art I had ever created consisted of 15 nearly identical stick men that performed a karate kick when viewed in series. The only training I had received in painting was watching my mother create flowers out of oil and canvas. Up until this point I thought for sure that I did not receive the art gene. Either I was wrong or it's easier than it looks.

This article will walk you through the steps I took to turn a corn hole set into a piece of art. I will not go into details regarding assembly, but fear not Johnyater has already taken care of that for us. Instead, I want to walk you through the painting process.

What will you paint? Although this question might seem straight forward, it can easily overwhelm you. So here is my advice - browse through a few hundred pictures on Google Images, pick five that pop out to you, then choose the one that you can visualize recreating. I chose a Blue Moon Beer piece (see pic on right) not because I love their beer, but because I love their artwork. Plus beer and corn hole go really well together.

Once you have chosen a picture, copy it and paste it into a Miscrosoft Excel sheet.

This is a little trick that I picked up from watching my mom paint. The goal here is to break the picture apart into tiny segments. Trust me - this is the best method to keep your proportions accurate. Now that you have your picture pasted into Excel, you need to create a grid to break it up into segments.

1. Resize Your Spreadsheet - reduce the width and height of all of your rows and columns to 11 pixels (number of pixels will be displayed as you are changing the width/height of the columns/rows). When you have done this each cell should be a perfect square. One cell will represent 1 square inch.

2. Create Your Board - make a thick border that is 24 cells wide by 48 cells tall. This will represent one corn hole board. Fit your picture inside this border.

3. Create Your Grid - place 23 thin horizontal lines across your model. The lines should be spaced two cells apart from each other. The top most line placed two cells from the top border. Then place 11 thin vertical lines across your model. Again, each line should be spaced 2 cells apart with the left most line placed two cells from the left border. Note: You must use the line tool rather than the border tool to make these lines. Otherwise your picture will cover up your lines. The line tool can be found in 'Insert' - 'Picture' - 'AutoShapes' - 'Lines'.

4. Create Your Hole - Go to 'Insert' - 'Picture' - 'AutoShapes' - 'Basic Shapes' - 'Oval'. Using this tool make a circle that is 6 cells tall by 6 cells wide. The center of this circle should be placed 9 cells down from the top border and centered horizontally.

Your Excel model should now look like the above picture.

5. Sketch Grid On Wood - Now it's time to step away from your computer and get to work on your actual corn hole board. Just like the grid on your Excel model, you want to make 23 horizontal lines and 11 vertical lines across the surface of your corn hole board. Make sure you do this in pencil. You don't want these lines showing up in your final product. Each line should be two inches apart from each other. The top most line should be two inches from the top edge of your board and the left most line should be two inches from the left edge of your board.

You have now sussesfully transposed your Excel model grid to a life-sized corn hole board. Two steps complete!

Although this step may seem somewhat daunting, you will be surprised how easy the grid method makes it. Rather than having one big complicated picture to sketch, you have 288 small easy ones. In order to make sure that you don't mix squares up when transposing them from your Excel model to your corn hole board I would recommend numbering your rows and columns. Even so I would also recommended sketching the entire outline in pencil. You are bound to make one or two mistakes... I made at least a dozen. This is probably going to take the majority of your time, so I will let you get to work. I just have a couple quick pointers before you get started:

1. Start with the most prominent objects. This will give you a good frame of reference for the smaller details. I sketched the outline of the bottle and the glass first, then moved on to the labels.

2. Only sketch objects that actually have borders. For instance, the background in my picture has no distinguishable shape or border. It required no sketching.

3. Rather than sketch one segment at a time, sketch one object at a time while using the segments as a frame of reference. I found that doing this helped me avoid mixing up segments.

4. Make yourself comfortable. If you spend hours hunching over this thing you are going to get sore. Take some time to stretch out and recompose yourself. I did the majority of my work kneeling on the floor. I found putting pillows under my knees made a world of difference.

5. Enjoy yourself! If you find yourself getting bored or feeling anxious to finish, just come back some other time when you are feeling more rejuvenated. Art doesn't happen over night. Your level of focus makes a huge difference in the quality of your work.

I apologize that I didn't take a picture during my sketching process, but below you will see my completed sketch with some of the painting finished. As you can see I had my computer opened in front me with my Excel model displayed on the screen.

Unlike everything else that you have done up until this point, painting is irreversible. It is more important now than ever to plan your moves carefully. The first thing you need to do is write down all of the colors and shades you are going to need. Check over this list two or three times to make sure you have including every single section of your picture. Now figure out which shades you can create by mixing together primary colors. For instance, I only purchased 2 shades of blue paint, but if you look carefully at my painting you will see 4 or 5 different shades. I was able to change the brightness of the blues by mixing in small amounts of black or white paint. If you are unsure of what shade two colors will produce, experiment! It took me a lot of orange and black paint before I got a shade of brown that I liked. Once you get a shade you like, either write down the ratio you used or make a lot of it so that your colors stay consistent. I made about a quarter of a gallon of dark blue because I knew that I would need a lot of it for the background. Its far better to overestimate than to underestimate. Now its time to whip out the brushes. If your picture looks anything like mine, you are going to need to meld a lot of colors together. I used one paint brush for each individual color and one brush to streak together every color coupling. As you can see in the picture above I started with the orange beer in the glass. The only two colors I needed to use for this portion were orange and white. By globbing on a generous amount of orange and a small amount of white I was able to meld the two colors together to get that bubbly swirling effect you see. I used long vertical brush strokes to make it look like the beer was still flowing while keeping the white and orange somewhat separated. This long single direction stroke method was necessary in nearly every portion of my painting in order to get the same feel as the original picture. I found that its a good way to transition gradually between two shades of color. If your picture looks completely different then mine, then experiment with several brush stroke methods until you find something that works for you. If you have trouble staying within your outline, try using some painters tape. With time, patience, and careful planning you will be able to find the artist inside yourself too!

Below you will find another mid project picture as well as my finished project. I would also like to note that Blue Moon began decorating their tractor trailers... guess which picture they decided to use.