Close

Finished my first portrait!

A project log for DIY Knit Portrait

Software to create your own Knit-like string pictures.

raphael-schaafRaphael Schaaf 12/15/2020 at 23:314 Comments

I finally finished my first portrait!

And as any great artist has to have one, I decided to make a self portrait ;D

Here are some pictures of what it looked like in the software and the finished product:

I'm quite happy with how it turned out :)

Some notes:

The wooden ring is not strong enough for 3000+ lines of string, it gets slightly distorted into a "pringles" shape. This might cause a loss in details. A second ring glued to it might help with that.

The picture can't be hung directly on the wall, as not enough light passes through it and there wouldn't be sufficient contrast between the string and the background, making the image too dark. A backlight would help with this, but I just hung it from the ceiling, about 20cm from the wall.

It turned out slightly darker than in the software, keep that in mind if you try your hand at one of these string portraits :)

Discussions

chaterrony wrote 01/03/2021 at 20:43 point

incredible! All of us just use the software to play around and be surprised about the outcome. I thought about it to make an automated mechanical device which will follow the machine code and string it automatically (due to a long ToDoList, I will not start for years with this...).
But great to see what you did, and that it looks impressive in real life also!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Raphael Schaaf wrote 01/08/2021 at 06:52 point

Thank you :)

Yeah that's on my todo list as well, but there's about 100 other projects before that :)

  Are you sure? yes | no

Gerben wrote 12/18/2020 at 14:12 point

Great points. Thanks for sharing.

How long did it take you to string-up?

  Are you sure? yes | no

Raphael Schaaf wrote 01/08/2021 at 06:55 point

Thank you :)

Without counting my first failed attempt (counted the nails wrong), about 12-14 hours in total. I could make about 300 lines per hour when focusing on it, but most of the time I was watching a movie while stringing it.

  Are you sure? yes | no