The artist says: Thanks for reading my contemporary art blog! If you are involved in the art and culture industry in any way, and would like to syndicate content from or to this blog, or if you simply enjoy art and would like to get in touch, please leave a comment! This article has been kindly provided by: articlesbase

The artist says: Thanks for reading my contemporary art blog! If you are involved in the art and culture industry in any way, and would like to syndicate content from or to this blog, or if you simply enjoy art and would like to get in touch, please leave a comment! This article has been kindly provided by: articlesbase

I know an art student who came up with a terrific way to turn a sculpture project into the beginning of a lucrative business and gained critical attention in the process.

For a year-end project she had created a series of puppets modeled on 19th Century French freak show performers. The puppets were beautifully constructed of wood, clay, fabric, and fur and were outstandingly accurate. The eight finished puppets were acclaimed by her teachers and peers alike and were chosen for display in a popular local gallery.

Following the show they were simply stored away…until their creator, also an amateur photographer, came up with an idea.

She carefully photographed each puppet on a neutral background many times over until she came up with eight high resolution same-size matching images. She then sent the digital photos to a popular online photos to canvas art gallery that had been highly recommended, Paint Your Life ( www.PrintYourCanvas.com ), and had the photos printed on canvas and framed in two sets of four each.

The results were amazing, and she sold both sets for a good price within a few days of receiving them from Paint Your Life. The images were charming enough for a children’s room and yet edgy enough for any home or office, and the quality was terrific.

So, she ordered some more. Once she saw that she was dealing with experts in the photo to canvas process, she started working with their editors to come up with variations in printing and displaying the eight images: single images in large formats, smaller images combined and framed together, etc.

Then she discovered that the Paint Your Life ( www.PaintYourLife.com ) photos on canvas gallery also had a staff of talented and experienced artists creating oil paintings, watercolors, and acrylic paintings from photos. So she ordered another series of her puppet photos as oil paintings…and immediately sold them too. Then she tried the puppets as watercolors…and they sold just as successfully.

The custom paintings from photos were such a success she’s now considering ordering Paint Your Life’s ( http://www.printyourcanvas.com/ ) photos to canvas produced in the style of Lichtenstein, Graphic,…or even Pop Art.

 The artist says: Thanks for reading my contemporary art blog! If you are involved in the art and culture industry in any way, and would like to syndicate content from or to this blog, or if you simply enjoy art and would like to get in touch, please leave a comment! This article has been kindly provided by: articlesbase

There aren’t many people who could put a face to Gary Hume, even if they could spot one of his glossy, candy-coloured paintings a mile off. Of the gaggle of late-Eighties Goldsmiths graduates who enjoyed the patronage of Charles Saatchi and Jay Jopling, and later became known as the YBAs (Young British Artists), Hume has never been a fully-fledged celebrity in the way that Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin have.

This could be due to his choice of medium; while his peers were busy sinking
sharks in formaldehyde and immortalising their unmade beds, Hume stuck to
plain old painting. He tried his hand at sculpture in the early days but
says: “They kept falling over. That was my main trouble: gravity.”

There was another reason why Hume seemed out of step with his Brit art
contemporaries. While his friends were getting wasted at the Groucho Club,
Hume was more likely to be found sitting in a playground with his young son,
Joe, of whom he shared custody with a former girlfriend. Hume was determined
that his son should have a dad (his own father left when he was 18 months
old), though he remembers early parenthood as an “incredibly boring
activity” and is in no hurry to do it again.

Joe is now 22 and studying contemporary dance in New York, and Hume, 47, is
married to the artist Georgie Hopton. The couple divide their time between
London and a small farm in the Catskills in upstate New York where they
spend summers tending the vegetable garden and making maple syrup.

We meet in his London studio, a smart, two-storey space near Old Street. The
vivid flawlessness of his paintings stands in conspicuous contrast to Hume,
who is rather unkempt-looking, with his three-day stubble and frayed
sweater. Grooming clearly isn’t high on his to-do list, even though the
precision of his work would suggest that he is, at heart, something of a
perfectionist.

The studio is lined with his trademark gloss-on-aluminium paintings, all huge
– around ten feet high – and propped against the wall on empty paint-pots.
Downstairs there’s a kitchen and living area, at the end of which sits a
bookshelf stuffed with exhibition catalogues and titles on Michelangelo, de
Kooning and Beuys. There are books on birds and flowers picked up on Hume’s
frequent trips to Charing Cross Road in search of inspiration. “If I’m
feeling desperate I’ll go out image-hunting,” he says. “I’ll go to
newsagents and stand at the rack flicking through magazines or go to
second-hand bookshops. And then, bit by bit, like concrete poetry, I start
to realise that I am drawn to particular things and then I start wondering
why that is.”

Laden with images, Hume will then come back and start drawing. “One
drawing demands to become a painting so I start to work on that, and then
the painting might demand something else,” he explains. “Then the
painting might say, ‘I want a companion, and the companion should be like
this’, so I have to find that, either by drawing it myself or locating the
image.”

Hume has a habit of talking about his paintings as if they are living beings
with minds of their own. He has said that a dialogue that exists between him
and his work, though that’s not to suggest that he sits in his studio all
day madly jabbering at his paintings. He is, I think, making a point about
the instinctive nature of his work; his ideas come from a place in his mind
that he can’t quite locate and would rather not question.

Hume is currently preparing a selection of paintings and drawings for an
exhibition in Salisbury, and another at the Sprth Magers gallery
in Berlin. He is also set to publish his first picture book, a self-titled
coffee-table number which lays out, in no particular order, his life’s work,
from his famous door paintings through to his pictures of flowers, hats,
babies, birds and body parts.

It was the door paintings that made Hume’s name. Three of them appeared in
Freeze, the 1988 exhibition of Goldsmiths graduates that caught the eye of
Charles Saatchi and thus jolted British art out of its torpor.

The doors were inspired by an advertisement Hume had seen for Bupa, and were
life-size replicas of the swing-doors inside St Bartholomew’s Hospital in
east London. One of them hangs here in the kitchen. Blank and beautiful,
it’s painted magnolia and blends in so well with the units that I don’t
notice it until Hume points it out, which is probably the point.

Hume finished the original Door series in 1992, though he continues to make
the odd one for old times’ sake. Did they hamper what came next? “Not
really, but I’d had enough of them,” he reflects. “I loved them
but unless I stopped making the damned things I knew it was all I would make
for ever and I would be bored out of my mind.

“They are beautiful to look at and you can have fun with them
intellectually, but to actually paint them is incredibly boring. You’re
sanding and sanding and then painting and sanding again and painting. It is
a nightmare, overwhelmingly awful. I just couldn’t be that bored, not for
art.”

The most successful of his paintings, Hume maintains, are born from
embarrassment. He opens his book and shows me a picture from 1994 called
Polar Bear.

“When I was making that I was tearing my hair out and thinking: ‘Oh my
God, how could I draw that? It’s ridiculous. What am I doing?’ Looking at it
now I love it, but to enable myself to make that I have to be embarrassed by
it. Someone’s going to come in and say: ‘What is that childish nonsense,
that great big blobby thing with all these pubic tendrils sticking out?’
You’ve got to be okay with that, otherwise you are working within a
consensus.”

Hume loves gloss paint because of its ability to reflect light and change
colour under different conditions and at different times of day. He flinches
a little when I say that some might see his works as decorative. Certainly,
their aesthetic qualities make them considerably more accessible than, say,
one of the Chapman brothers’ penis-nosed dolls, and are undoubtedly the kind
of paintings that people want to own.

A few years ago Elton John asked Hume to make something for his shower at
home.

“I said to him, ‘of course, what a nice idea,’ but inside I was thinking:
‘Are you fucking mad? Of course I don’t want to make anything for your
shower. How insulting!’ After that, every time I saw him he would say,
‘how’s the shower piece going?’ and I’d say, ‘fine.’ Then, after about two
years, he said: ‘Look, Gary, what’s happening?’ So I said that I didn’t want
to do it after all. So he said: “Well, why don’t you get a can of spray
paint, write, ‘Elton’s a cunt’ in my shower, and I’ll buy it.”

In the end Hume built a marble piece inspired by William Blake’s gravestone
for John’s shower. It was a huge success, and led to him making more for
exhibition. “It was a problem-solving exercise – how do you create
something beautiful and worthwhile for a shower-room? – that resulted in me
making something that I would never have thought of in other circumstances.
So I was pleased. But I still wrote ‘Elton is a cunt’ on the back of it. Ha
ha!”

Hume grew up in Kent, the fourth of five children. His mother read a lot of
poetry and would take the children on day trips to London galleries. “I
remember my feet aching and thinking, ‘will this ever end?” he recalls.
At school he wasn’t exactly filled with encouragement by teachers who told
him he would never amount to anything. “At the time I thought: ‘You’re
offering me a passport to a world I don’t want to be a citizen of, it seems
overwhelming dull.”

Hume left school with three O-levels, and a vague hankering to make films. “I
went to Soho every day knocking on the doors of editing suites. I got a job
as an assistant film editor, which lasted for a few years but I found
writing incredibly difficult, and I thought: ‘How am I going to make a film
if I can’t write?’ I didn’t really comprehend that someone else would do
that bit.”

After two years he fell out with one of the directors, was fired and returned
to Kent. He worked as a petrol-pump attendant for six months before getting
a job making life-insurance- trading films.

“That was awful, truly dreadful. I realised that I had to do something
where I could be in charge of what I was doing, so I thought then that maybe
I could do pictures.” He enrolled in evening classes in art at the
Working Men’s College in Camden, London, and later signed up for an art
foundation course.

After a year at Liverpool Polytechnic, Hume transferred to Goldsmiths, where
he found himself working amid a group of hugely confident and like-minded
people. His tutors later said that there was a chemical reaction between the
students that was unprecedented and very exciting.

It was a competitive yet supportive environment that Hume found thrilling. “Everyone
was simply trying to find a way of making their own work and finding their
own voice. When they found that voice, and made something good, you’d say:
‘How brilliant. I wish I’d done that myself, but how brilliant.’”

After the fabled Freeze exhibition, Saatchi bought two of Hume’s door
paintings and commissioned four more. By the mid-Nineties, Hume and friends
were the toast of Britain’s cultural scene and were rubbing shoulders with
pop stars, film-makers, writers and actors.

“My wife thinks the Brit-art thing is a load of rubbish, but that’s
because she wasn’t in it,” he grins. “I wasn’t out and about so
much because of my son but it was definitely an exciting time. You had a bit
of money in your pocket and you felt that there was this power, a sense of
entitlement. It gave us confidence and for a while that was nice.”

Since then Brit-art’s enfants terribles have become contented figures of the
establishment. Hume was the first of the group to be welcomed into the Royal
Academy in 2001, having already represented Britain in the Venice Biennale
in 1999. Since then his old chums – with whom he is still in touch – have
branched out. Emin writes newspaper columns; Hirst runs a multimedia empire;
Sam Taylor-Wood makes feature films. Meanwhile Hume has stuck doggedly to
his original vision. His palette has darkened, and he has even started
dabbling in sculpture again (and has, finally, found a way of keeping them
upright) but his aesthetic hasn’t altered radically since his YBA days.

“I really love making things and I don’t really have the confidence to
do much else,” Hume reflects with apparent contentment.

“It’s the great pleasure and pain of life that you really are stuck as
yourself and however much you wish you were capable of making someone else’s
work, you can’t. So you don’t.”

‘Hume’ is published by Other Criteria. Gary Hume: New Work is at the New
Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury until 4 May (Sculpture.uk.com). He is
also exhibiting at Sprth Magers gallery in Berlin from 2 July – September – www.Spruethmagers.com

 The artist says: Thanks for reading my contemporary art blog! If you are involved in the art and culture industry in any way, and would like to syndicate content from or to this blog, or if you simply enjoy art and would like to get in touch, please leave a comment! This article has been kindly provided by: The Independent – Art RSS Feed

Canvas art or canvas paintings are an innovative and aesthetic way of preserving and showcasing favorite pictures. A canvas print is actually an image which is printed onto a canvas from a photograph. That is why it is also known as a photo canvas. The canvas is then stretched gently across a frame. The photo canvas can then be displayed. This helps to preserve the original photo without exposing it to dust, wrinkles and other damage. Canvases need not necessarily rectangular in shape. Canvases that are of varied shaped like circles etc are sometimes referred to as New York canvases. This is because, around the 60’s, paintings on differently shaped and textured canvases became very popular in New York.

For a good quality photo canvas it is important that the original picture be printed on good quality photo printing paper. Multi purpose papers are available that can be used for printing both black and white documents as well as photos but photos that are printed on these papers will be inferior in colour and brightness to those printed on exclusive photo printing papers. There are different parameters to judge the quality of photo printing paper. A photo printing paper that is of high quality will be opaque so that colour does not easily run onto the other side. A large amount of light will be reflected of its surface when compared to ordinary printing papers. It will have a thickness of 7 to 10 mil so that it does not get easily creased or wrinkled and is more long lasting.

Digital canvas prints are also becoming very popular nowadays because of the wider use of digital cameras the world over and the convenience of using computers. A digital canvas print is also like a photo canvas except that a print need not be taken out on paper. The image can be directly printed from the computer onto the canvas and then gently stretched and framed.  One big advantage of digital canvas prints is that changes can be made to the original digital image using special software. Thus the beauty of the picture can be heightened before it is printed on canvas giving the best possible effects. It is also cost effective as there is no requirement of photo printing paper. This feature also makes it more environment friendly.

Canvas prints, whether photo canvas or digital canvas prints can be effectively used to decorate a room bringing it to life with vibrant colors and happy memories. Apart from being used as decorative items these canvases make ideal personalized gifts for every occasion be it birthdays or anniversaries or even as a good bye gift. So go ahead , dabble in some canvas printing, and watch those precious memories come back to life as you glance at them each time you look up at your wall and don’t forget to take a photo of that wide smile your long time childhood friend gives you when you gift her a canvas print of those golden moments of innocent childhood.

 The artist says: Thanks for reading my contemporary art blog! If you are involved in the art and culture industry in any way, and would like to syndicate content from or to this blog, or if you simply enjoy art and would like to get in touch, please leave a comment! This article has been kindly provided by: articlesbase

1 – Use High Resolution Digital Photos

Canvas printing can be done with any picture or photo but the image file you send to the canvas printing service will determine the overall quality of the resulting canvas. Scanned photos can work well, as too can other digital picture files, but high resolution digital photos do tend to offer the best possible results. Also try to ensure that your camera is set to the most appropriate quality and lighting settings because these can make a big difference when viewed on screen and an even bigger difference when printed on canvas.

2 – Ensure The Picture Has A Natural Crop

Most pictures can benefit from some cropping, even light cropping. Cropping a picture basically means cutting it down and it is done to ensure that a picture does not contain too much off putting background or foreground and that the subject of the picture really is the main subject. Most pictures, but especially photos of people, have a natural crop to them that will lend itself perfectly to use with canvas printing.

3 – Remove Blemishes, Red Eyes, And Date Stamps

Blemishes, red eyes, and date stamps are just some of the factors that can detract from the quality of a picture. Canvas prints can last a lifetime so it’s important that you enjoy the end product once it’s hung on your wall. If you have a picture that you want to use and it’s perfect except for one or more of these then either remove them yourself with photo editing software or have it done professionally. Some canvas printing services will do this work for free of charge as part of the canvas printing process.

4 – Pick Canvas Dimensions To Suit Your Picture

As well as choosing the right crop for your picture, also ensure that you use canvas dimensions that are best suited to your picture. A canvas can be hung in either portrait or landscape orientation and there is a wide range of standard sizes available. For extra large or pictures with unusual dimensions, bespoke sizes are also available.

5 – Use A High Quality Canvas Printing Service

The canvas printing service you use will be one of the biggest factors in determining how well your canvas print turns out. A good service will be able to work sympathetically with the photo you provide in order to crop it, remove blemishes and other imperfections, and even advise you on the most suitable dimension of canvas to use.

6 – Get The Right Wrap

There are three types of wrap that can be used in the creation of your canvas print – gallery wrap, mirror wrap, and no wrap. With gallery wrap the edges of your picture are printed around the edge of the frame. For those pictures with important content on the edges, mirror wrap repeats the edges on the side of the canvas so that you can still enjoy the full picture on the front while softening the edge of the canvas too. No wrap means that the picture is printed only on the front of the canvas and the edges will appear blank.

 The artist says: Thanks for reading my contemporary art blog! If you are involved in the art and culture industry in any way, and would like to syndicate content from or to this blog, or if you simply enjoy art and would like to get in touch, please leave a comment! This article has been kindly provided by: articlesbase

Canvas Prints

The canvas print is the most popular of all photo gifts. It is a high quality item that offers truly breathtaking photo realism and reproduction levels that are vastly superior to the results generated when printing on paper at home. As well as the standard single canvas print, you can also have montage prints created incorporating many of your best pictures. Another alternative is converting colour photos to black and white or having a unique pop art print created. Montages and pop art conversions can also be added to these 5 photo gift ideas.

1 – Photo Books And Albums

The cover and presentation tin of the photo book and photo album can be customised with your design or photo. You can also add text to further personalise the cover and add a personalised greeting. While the photo album enables you or the recipient to add your own choice of photos, the photo book offers you the opportunity to pick the pictures and then have them printed directly onto the pages of the book.

2 – Photo Calendars

The photo calendar is a highly customisable item because you can design the cover as well as each of the monthly pages. Choose a photo and accompanying caption for each of the months of the year and design the cover by including another photo and a title. Pick the month in which the calendar should start and you can create a photo gift item that is perfect for Christmas, birthdays, and any other celebration.

3 – Photo Bags

Use a pop art conversion or a standard photo print and have it added to the front of a photo bag. The standard design layout of any bag, a range which includes handbags, makeup bags, and even laptop bags, is to choose a photo for one side of the bag. However, you may also opt to print a second picture on the other side of the bag to make it even more personal.

4 – Photo Cushions And Blankets

Many items of home furnishing or soft furnishing can be customised in a similar fashion. Cushions and blankets offer you the opportunity to add a photo on one side and pick a colour for the other; again, though, you can for a little extra choose to have the same or another picture printed on the back of the item.

5 – Photo Blocks And Digital Frames

Photo blocks and digital frames are modern versions of the traditional framed photo. Your photo is printed directly on to the self standing resin photo block making it lightweight, safe, and convenient. Alternatively, a digital photo frame can be used to store hundreds or even thousands of pictures. The recipient can choose display a single favourite photo or all of them in a timed slideshow.

 The artist says: Thanks for reading my contemporary art blog! If you are involved in the art and culture industry in any way, and would like to syndicate content from or to this blog, or if you simply enjoy art and would like to get in touch, please leave a comment! This article has been kindly provided by: articlesbase

Rather than use acrylic printsto have photos made in a wall artthat one can be proud of, the use of canvas art is the most popular and revered. As most individuals try to find special gifts, inimitable and largely special for all their beloved people, many will just offer them presents and gifts that they are used to. There are a diverse offering of tokens but the pleasure of valentine turns to be an issue when you cannot provide a gift that is unique and raises joy in a person.

When you go to purchase a gift for a special person, you might work across the shopping complex and at the end of the day lack anything special and personalized you can give to your lover. Perhaps you might consider the irresistibility of canvas art and the provisions it comes with. Finding an alluring print that is well suited on  canvas is a perfect present for a love one, since the extraordinary nature of the image does have some lasting feelings and effect. If you want a masterpiece at a cheaper rate, you can have them transformed using the art of canvas while you could also have the photos or even negatives of any size made into very dazzling and transforming pieces of art.

When it comes to canvas art, canvas comes endowed with a natural aspect that aids in the implementation of very high quality types of canvas jobs. The onset of inks that cannot fade and high class, quality fabric such as cotton and the advent of modern digital technology has made it easy to get a waterproof and qualitative product. Most of the canvases are well stretched well across wooden frames and suited superbly ready to adorn walls while creating very nice atmosphere that brings tasteful details to a home while transforming the present décor.

Have you ever thought of having your own digital photo or any other image of yourself and a special message put on the canvas? You might count yourself missing a unique chance like no other. It can be a great present for your boyfriend or girlfriend, canvas art that radiates love and happiness. With sweet lovely pictures, kisses and apt smiles adorned on the picture, you could add some very fine adorable words that will definitely shine in your love life forever, lasting longer enough like the canvas photo itself. Perhaps you have forgotten your old parents and the significance of valentine even for them.

However, you can run through their photo album, have the loveliest of all their black and white wedding photos, and have it transferred into canvas art where it will be harmonized with bright and new hues. No one will be surprised like your own parents while sending a lovely feeling and improving the mood of the day. Such small canvas photo moments transform a person, while lasting not only on the canvas for a long time but in the hearts of those in the image.

 The artist says: Thanks for reading my contemporary art blog! If you are involved in the art and culture industry in any way, and would like to syndicate content from or to this blog, or if you simply enjoy art and would like to get in touch, please leave a comment! This article has been kindly provided by: articlesbase

Stretched canvas prints make the moment that’s canvassed come alive. You must have noticed such prints while visiting a museum or an art gallery. Images stretched around the canvas appear absolutely grand. With stretched canvas printing available online, now you can also get your cherished memories converted into stretched canvas prints.

These enticing prints not only help you recollect the precious moment of past but also make a wonderful home décor accessory. Adorning the walls of your living room, these awesome artworks give you a great platform to showcase your photography skills in front of the visitors.

These prints let you add majestic look and an element of personal touch to the interior of your home. If you also wish to bring life to your living room with some truly memorable images of your past, stretched canvas prints are certainly the best option to go with. All you need to do is make your selection of photos and get them converted to canvas prints with the help of a skilful printer.

How to find a skillful printer?

Finding a skilful printer is easy, and a simple search on your favorite search engine will bring forth numerous good results to choose from. Few good printers let you crop the picture and change its background as per your preference. Once you are done with the editing and touching up of your favorite photo, you can place your order online and the rest will be taken care of by the printer.

Choosing the best photo

However, when deciding to get stretched canvas prints you must select the best photo in terms of the clarity and color balance. Of course, the picture should be one of the most precious moments of your life. To further add to the charm of your stretched canvas print, an aesthetic and attractive frame is a must.

Stretched canvas print – a unique gift item for your family and friends

Not only do these prints make a wonderful home décor accessory but also are a unique gift item for your family and friends. Can you imagine the pleasure of receiving a memorable photo framed and printed like an exclusive artwork from some seasoned artisan?

 The artist says: Thanks for reading my contemporary art blog! If you are involved in the art and culture industry in any way, and would like to syndicate content from or to this blog, or if you simply enjoy art and would like to get in touch, please leave a comment! This article has been kindly provided by: articlesbase