How to Make a Gridded Button Portrait

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Lee Meredith, contributor

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Use assorted vintage buttons for a truly one-of-a-kind work of art!

Lee Meredith

Like Chuck Close paintings, the image shows up better as you step farther away from it.

Lee Meredith

You can use any colors, as long as they are divided into light and dark shades.

Lee Meredith

Use assorted vintage buttons for a truly one-of-a-kind work of art!

Photo: Lee Meredith

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Beyond this basic assigning of shades to each square, you can get creative with your specific button choices—when I ran out of the blue shades, I switched to light yellow/green and dark green, then blended into light orange/pink and dark pink/red, then into light pink/peach and dark browns. I also could have mixed up all the different lights together and all the darks together, but I think my image reads better by breaking up the colors as I did.

Like Chuck Close paintings, the image shows up better as you step farther away from it.

As for making your photo into the gridded image you'll need to work from, I did the whole process on my computer, but you can do it on paper if you don't have a software program that will do it all. You'll still need to edit the photo into a contrasty black and white image on your computer, but then you can print it out and draw the grid on top with a ruler (that's how I did mine back in college). I'll show you how to do it on your computer, with notes for the low-tech option.

Once you have your photo in your editing program, you need to crop it to the dimensions of your surface. My cabinet door is 9 inches x 24 inches, so I plugged those numbers into the select tool's "fixed ratio" boxes and cropped what I wanted. More detailed images will not work as well with this format—closer-up pictures will have less detail and therefore will be easier to see as a button portrait. (Of course, you don't have to choose a portrait, but faces do work well for this technique.)

Crop to the ratio of the surface you're making into button artwork.

Now desaturate your image (or make it black and white) and adjust the levels, or the brightness/contrast, until it has pure white, pure black, and contrasting shades of gray.

If you don't have a levels option, you should at least have a brightness/contrast tool.

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Comments (7)

paperrain writes: I'm doing this! I'm going to also buy stock in buttons. I've got about a dozen projects for them now!
Posted: 5:08 pm on March 21st

oldjack writes: What a great idea for a portrait. Can not wait to try this.
Thanks Lee.
Posted: 12:17 pm on March 14th

gabriellek writes: This is absolutely FANTASTIC! Thank you for sharing! We can't wait to make a few and put our mosaics on canvas'

Love it!
Posted: 12:04 am on March 10th

sALTYGAL writes: Awesome idea and great instructions!
Posted: 1:57 pm on March 7th

eyesaflame writes: Ok, this is really cool . . .are you sure you've been sick? Or have you just been letting your body be taken over by some kind of alien snot-monster craft genius? 'Cause this is BRILLIANT!!
Posted: 3:59 pm on March 6th

Sister_Diane writes: Wow, Lee - this is so amazing. And your instructions are so clear, I totally feel like I could make one. Thanks so much!
Posted: 10:00 am on March 6th

Jen_W writes: This is splendid and so original! I love Chuck Close too, and this is such a great twist.
Posted: 12:21 am on March 6th

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