In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques episode, Deke takes a photo of his son Sam and turns it into a giant mural on the side of a brick wall. This is one of those creatively fun DT projects that a) makes you want to try it and b) makes you wonder what in the hell you’d do with a giant mural of Sam (as cute as he is). 

So I set out to prove that one could use the information in this week’s tutorial using pictures of one’s own son and one’s own mysterious door. (OK, I got the door from Fotolia, #62739627 from Giuseppe Porzani. You can get free Fotolia images by going to fotolia.com/deke.) Trying Deke’s project not only made me a vigilant beta tester, it also gave me a chance to stare at this handsome photo of my son dressed up for Senior Prom for a little bit longer. 

I used a different technique for painting the background (an ad hoc application of Liquify and the Mixer Brush tool), but the posterization, brick effect, and addition of the door were stolen directly from Deke. Here’s my result: 

For members of lynda.com, Deke’s got an exclusive movie this week in which he refines the effect even further and even adds a bystanding art aficionado to the scene to admire Sam from below. 

If you’re not a member of lynda.com, but you do have adorable children you want to expertly plaster to the side of a virtual wall, you can get a free week’s trial subscription to lynda.com by going to lynda.com/deke.