In this description, we will take an image from photo to black and white line art. There are probably some extra steps, but this shows how it was actually done.

Start with a photo

Open it in gimp

Adjust the image with a filter

I used the find edges, gaussian filter

Convert the image to black and white

Adjust the brightness and contrast until the grays are gone and there are lines

Print the image

Go over the image with a marker

Add some variety to the image by having some lines thick and others thin

I then cut the image as a silkscreen stencil using a utility knife

After determining that I might not have the right chemicals, or the stencil might be old, I decided to scan the stencil rather than wrecking it.

The scan was a color scan, black and white was too irregular.

I put the image on a wiki for online storage because the computer didn't have gimp.

The image also got uploaded to flickr for archiving purposes.

convert the image to black and white

Invert the values

not quite an instant black and white conversion, but it has some human touch.