This is the story of how
inspired
Now, I am NO artist. I am not trying to flaunt my skills (or lack there of). But, here's my story.
I was lucky enough to get to spend a whole week in my hometown at my Dad's house for the holidays. They have Apple TV, where one of the features is a running slideshow of pictures saved on their computer. When the above picture came across the screen, I inquired. My step-mom said she took a picture of it because she loved it and wanted it, but didn't buy it. It matches the living room perfectly. So, later, I was talking to my Dad and told him I could probably recreate it ... well, a version of it.
So, wait, where does the math come in? It comes in scaling things. Any picture can be resized and recreated if you want. Just grid it out. So, I printed the photo on 4x6 paper, grided it and then grided the canvas. Make sure both grids have the same number of "boxes" and are evenly spaced. See here:
and 
All it takes is a ruler and some careful measurements. Make it exact! Now, in the right side picture you can see that I sketched in the fleur de lis into the boxes trying to match it. Just go box to box, estimate it and draw it.
That's the hard part! Now, I knew there was no way I could antique it how the original was. But, I was going to give it a stab. I painted the background red and the fleur de lis beige. Then, started to age it. I wish I had some more images to show you, but on top of the white, I took brown, blue, orange, black, etc and painted streaks. Then, once that dried, I "white-washed" it to make the darker colors not seem so bold.
became
which got aged into
