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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Resize the image now to be the exact number of inches as your surface (DPI doesn't matter, just inches)—it's okay if it gets blurry since you don't need detail, only shades. Before going further, take a look at your buttons and figure out the width of the largest ones you'll be using—that will be your grid size, or the width of each square. My grid width was 3/4 inches. Here's where it may get tricky depending on your editing software: Make a grid over the whole image of that size. In Photoshop, this means going into the grid preferences and setting the "gridline every" to the right length (0.75 inch for me), with zero subdivisions. And then select View->Show->Grid.

Each box in my grid will be one button.

If you choose to make your grid on paper, you'll have to do more math, so if you can print it sized to make the grid easier to draw, that will help you out a lot. For example, for my final size of 9 inches x 24 inches, and a grid size of 3/4 inch (or 0.75), if I had printed it at 3 inches x 8 inches (the size divided by 3), then I would draw a grid with lines 1/4 inch (0.25) apart. That's much simpler than if I just printed it fit to the paper size (so around 11 inches tall), making the math much harder than simply dividing everything by 3. Your particular dimensions will be different from mine, of course, so you'll have to figure out your own math. Once it's printed, just use a ruler to make marks across all four sides for the grid, then connect the dots with the straightedge.

Now you need to choose which of the four shades each square will be. So look at each square and see which shade seems to take up the majority of it—many squares will have multiple shades, so use your best judgment when choosing shades.

Around the eye, if more than half the square was black(ish), then I chose black; if more than half was white or gray, then that's the shade.

So if you're doing all this on the computer, you'll need to create a new layer, trace over the grid lines with a brush or line tool, then use the paint bucket to fill in each box. I went over the whole image filling in every white, then every black, then lights and darks. If you're working on paper, you can do the same thing, or use symbols to make it quicker, such as leave white blank, draw a check mark on light gray, an X on dark gray, and a star on black, or whatever works best for you. By choosing the shades ahead of time, you're making the button-gluing step go much faster and easier!

I chose to make the background all white so my cat's outline would be clear.

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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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