Has anybody painted artwork on to their cabinet?

[sewerrat]

I'm thinking about taking my projector and projecting images onto my cabinet to trace and painting the artwork that way.
Any thoughts??

[boboli]

I'm thinking about doing the same thing. Alternately, a friend of mine mocked up some "pixelated" artwork so that I could use a simple square stencil and spray paint the art.

Comments/suggestions? I also posted this in Project announcements, but thought I might get some response here.

[boboli]

bump

[johnperkins21]

I know a few people have painted their cabs. The one that comes to mind first is MYX's Blackout cab. He got very good results from painting, but didn't use a stensil. I believe it was tape and an airbrush.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=48239.0

[Frosty]

Here's a couple pics from the sideart I painted on my cab.  The way I saw it, the cabinet is a perfect canvas for some good art.

After sanding and priming, I painted the sides (two coats) and then drew the outlines.  The art was an old picture I had drawn years ago.  If your freehand skills are a little lacking, you can buy wax transfer paper or use a projector to trace outlines.  The paint was just regular acrylic paint--available anywhere.

Yeah, like everything else related to the project, it took longer than I planned.  Still, I'm really happy with the results.  No reason why you shouldn't give it a try...

[boboli]

Frosty - did you brush, roll, or a combination?

[Frosty]

A little bit of both on the sides.  The cabinet was in horrible shape when I got it.  I basically took the thing apart, repaired all the wood and rebuilt it.  Lots of sanding to remove glue and -- no joke -- blue faux wood paneling.  Primed a few times and then painted: two coats with a roller and brush for trim.

The art was painted with a #2 and #3 acrylic brush.  Standard stuff...

[blueznl]

I haven't build even my cabinet yet  but this is a technique I used in my kid's room, and there's no reason why it would not work elsewhere

Get the images you want, and modify them in a photo package / image editor. I used the same technique for the fish as well as for Ariel. I found an image of a mural (something airbrushed) on the net, which I resized and printed out in the appropriate size. I had to tape a few sheets together to get the proper format. As said before, same thing for the fish.

This is the moment to do some modifying, I decided to remove the 'crown' and parts of the dress of the original image, and change the part of the crown in a sort of shell / hairpin. If you look at the 'taped printout' you can see the things I left out. (Yes, those are post-its, great for NOT damaging the wallpaper when doing things like this )

Next step was 'fixing' the whole package to the surface (in this case the wall) and then I simply 'traced' all lines with a pen, applying some pressure to cause the surface below to indent.

After that I used a small black marker and drew those lines more visible, this simplifies painting. The plants, the blue fish, second yellow fish, rock stuff and 'shiny whatever at the bottom' were freehand.

Once I drew all lines in, I took a few spraycans to allow some 'shine' or 'wave' effects which are hard to do with brushes.

Then, finally, came the hard part. Using the print out, and a bunch of cans of paint, I set to work. I mixed the paint 'on the fly' and made sure it never got too bland.

Once done, I touched up again using the spraycan to give a certain shine in some areas, and done.

Pictures attached (looks a lot better in real life though, the flash in my Canon D350 sometimes brightens up things too much, the one with just the fish is the real colour). Be aware this is very time consuming (the mural took me two days). You may want to do it on some other material, then scan it and get it printed, that will save you some time when you have to redo it

I've actually been thinking about taking a few more high res pictures and having it printed on transparent vinyl. Would look great on a light blue cab.

(Oh, just a note: I used regular paint for this, all left overs, and an ice cube box to mix it up. It's easier with more suitable paint, but what the heck, this did cost nothing except some time.)

[pink]

I decided to remove the 'crown' and parts of the dress

[leapinlew]

On the main page is a link to that awesome metal slug themed cp -

http://www.ardnut.co.uk/mslug/

Also, I've seen some people airbrush on some pretty cool space scenery. I'm not so much an artist so I painted some stripes on my driving cab instead of sideart:

[blueznl]

I decided to remove the 'crown' and parts of the dress

You now got me puzzled, is the applauding for the artwork  or for the removal of the dress? 

[boboli]

took the plunge and started painting side art with a Mega Man theme.

First I did stripes & a star burst pattern (overlayed with glow in the dark paint for extra effect with lights off).

Next I'll be painting Mega Man like the mockup picture.

[blueznl]

Looks good, perhaps the light blue stripe isn't exactly right. If you're already done that, you may consider some tricks to bring the Megaman pricture more to the foreground, for example by filling in the background directly below / behind the character in another color, and by using stronger colors for the character itself.

[boboli]

what do you mean about the blue stripe being "not right"? The mega man picture on the side art is just photoshopped in - I'm sure it will be brighter & standout more when painted.

The stripe and starburst were painted with the idea of painting something very simple (spaceship or space invader character) but when I decided to go with Mega Man for the control panel, I knew I'd have to paint something to tie it all together. This is just one piece of clip art I downloaded.

Any more ideas about what might/might not work, bring 'em on! I'll just have to be mindful of my limitations - taping off lots of curved lines can get very tedious and difficult.

[blueznl]

I think the blue stipe is perhaps a bit too wide, but that's a personal taste thing I guess :-)

You're right about real artwork standing out a bit more.. An option may be to put an explosion behind it, or a black field / outline to increase contrast.

[Crowquill]

I like the light blue stripe the way it is. The background starburst looks nice too. It has the basic feel of Atari sideart.

Please DO NOT use the cheesy super-deformed Mega-Man artwork that's Photoshopped onto there now! If you really love the character that much to put him on the side, you owe it to yourself to use proper art from the games. Something like the cover-art to Mega-Man 8 would work well I'd think. Maybe some of the artwork from the Marvel vs Capcom games. If you need reference material, I probably have some around here somewhere.

[boboli]

Thanks for the comments Crowquill. I was originally going for complete retro (hence the stripe & starburst) but chose Mega Man to go along with it at the last minute.

I'd be into seeing some of your mega man examples. Keep in mind this has to be simple to paint (which is why I like the example I photoshopped in). Also, it has to be friendly/inviting enough for little kids (2 & 3 yr olds). I don't want to paint anything that will give my kids nightmares