Has anyone ever had one of these done? There are artists and services out there that take a photo and turn it into a painting. I'm not talking about something printed on canvas, but an actual painting. My mom's mother passed away fairly young, right after my parents were married and before they had my brother. Being from India and all, photographs were difficult to come by so there is only one photo of her currently. When I was home recently, I took a bunch of photos with me because I'm on a mission to scan all five billion of them. My mom had mentioned how she wishes there was a larger photo of her mother. I can definitely have this one enlarged, but we have a nice painting of my paternal grandfather hanging up at home sci thought this might be a good idea. I'm not sure where to start though. I tried google of course, but I don't know how to judge these services. I'd rather deal with an individual artist than a faceless company, but I don't really know how to go about doing this or what I should expect as far as pricing, etc.
When my family and I had a regular camera portrait done years ago, I saw that they had that painting service at Sears Photo Studio. I didn't inquire as to the price or quality. I did, however, buy a Corel Photo Painter application that I installed on my PC. I don't use it very often. It's decent quality. You might want to try something like that first. Good luck.
Etsy would be a good place to go to find people who do that kind of work. You can see the quality of their pieces and compare prices and all that. Sounds like a cool idea.
I'd check out Etsy as well. The pricing will depend on the artist, size, and medium. I've seen customs ranging from $50 to several thousand dollars. The most important thing is to choose a price you are comfortable with and that you feel suits the size and quality of the painting. If it helps, here's a general idea of where the artist will be coming from when he sets his price: canvasses of a fair size range in price from around $20-$100; enough paint to cover that canvass is going to be at least $30 for oils, a little less for acrylic and a little less for watercolor; then there's terpentine, brushes, jars, etc. You can expect your artist to be putting $50-$150 worth of materials into it, and whatever else goes into the price is labor and name. As an Etsy artist myself, if I arranged a painting (oil) from a photograph I'd charge between $200-$600 depending on the size of the canvass.
My dad does that type of painting. He doesn't have any portraits like you'd probably want online right now that I can point you to as an example of his work, and I certainly don't want to commit you to anything or sign him up for something without speaking to him first, but I'd be happy to at the very least inquire on your behalf and find you some examples of his work to look at. I'll talk to him tomorrow about it.
Hey guys, I appreciate all the responses, but something's come up so this project is on hold for right now. I'll keep all of your suggestions in mind in case it becomes a possibility again. Thanks!