Finding Photographic Inspiration for Your Own Canvas Printing

The revolution of smartphone cameras and affordable digital cameras has inspired a whole new generation of people to pursue photography as both a hobby and a source of design inspiration in their homes by photos on canvas in order to create bespoke wall art. But while some of the sources for canvas art are obvious – family photos, vacation shots – sometimes our design sensibility rejects faces and places as a design element and wants something more abstract, something closer to contemporary art.

You can purchase abstracts and patterns online or in a store, of course, but it’s more fun – and more intimate – to create your own for use in your interior design vision. Getting started is the hardest part – grab your camera phone or digital camera and try some of these simple tips to get amazing photos as grist for your photos on canvas.

Canvas Printing from Your Photos Tip 1: Colour

The first thing to consider when looking for inspiration for abstract-like images is the colours you’re working with. Whether it’s an existing room you’re seeking to accessorise or a design that’s evolving in your head for the future, your first step has to be the colour palette you’ll be working with.

Once you have the colours fixed in your mind – just look around! There are literally going to be dozens and dozens of potential subjects juts lying around the house. If your room needs yellow and green accents, open the fridge and find the lemons and limes you keep in the crisper. Need reds and oranges? What about the flowers in your garden, or the tomatoes and peppers you have on hand for dinner. Look at lamps, pillows, and your children’s crayon art – colour is everywhere.

Canvas Printing from Your Photos Tip 2: Zoom

The next tip is take your colour inspiration, whatever it is, is to get in close. And we mean close. Set your camera’s quality settings as high as they’ll go and get in as close as you can. Zoom in until you can’t readily recognise what the object is, until the natural texture becomes a pattern and the colours are vibrant and fill the frame.

The closer you get, the better – up to a point. If your image just becomes a blob of solid colour, you’ve gone in too close. We want the texture and pattern of it, we just want to abstract it a little so it becomes a pattern and not a photo. Play around – digital means you can take nearly infinite photos of your idea, so zoom in, zoom out, play with the lighting, and snap away until you have a bunch of interesting photos.

Canvas Printing from Your Photos Tip 3: Crop

Finally, when you have a raw photo that’s colourful and interesting, load it into your computer’s photo editing software and play with the cropping. You want a lot of colour – but you also need a little white space. Remember the Rule of Thirds and make sure your pattern and colour is composed well so the image has some energy – you don’t want flat, static photos on canvas that simply add splashes of colour – you want them to be more interesting than that.

When you’re done, you’ll have a beautiful abstract piece of contemporary art for photos on canvas that will enhance your room and still be an intimate piece of art from your own eye and your own life – priceless. When you’ve got the ideal image, click here and let us have the honour of turning it into an amazing piece of wall art!