How to Choose Subjects for Canvas Art

Living in the age when creating stunning wall décor for your home or office is an act of self-expression using your own photos to create art prints from canvas printers online, it’s easy to get lost in the excitement of this capability and move too quickly. Just scrolling through the photos on your phone and choosing some at random to have turned into canvas prints can result, frankly, in some truly mediocre photos being immortalised as canvas art forever.

A better approach is to plan ahead and take some bespoke photographs specifically for your interior design, instead of selecting from hundreds or thousands of photos taken over the year. Of course, if there is a certain photo of a certain moment that you wish to transform into a beautiful canvas print, that’s a whole other story. But if you’re looking to make a design impact with canvas prints online, it’s better to start from scratch and follow these simple guidelines for choosing your subjects.

Canvas Art Guideline One: Colour

The first consideration is the colour palette you’re working with. The colours in old, spontaneous photos are generally random and often washed out via poor use of flash or snapping the photos in poor light, or with the subjects posed against backdrops that wash them out or absorb them – imagine a photo of the family in blue toned swim wear snapped against the striking blue of the ocean!

Instead, choose your subjects for colours that will complement the wall colour and other colour choices in your home. Go for contrast. If the room you plan to decorate with canvas prints is done up in a certain colour palette, find a pop colour that will jump off the wall and make everything come alive, and dress your family in that colour or seek subjects that will accomplish what you want – the key is really to know what it is you wish to achieve and then seek it actively.

Canvas Art Guideline One: Composition

The next aspect of your photos to actively consider, instead of hoping to have randomly achieved it in the past, is the composition of the shot. This can sometimes be solved with cropping in photo software, but cropping can result in pixelated, blurred shots as you upsize the cropped version to a canvas art-appropriate size. It’s much better to compose your photos better to begin with.

First of all, consider filling the frame with your subject. This is one reason vacation photos are generally poor choices for canvas prints, because vacation photos often try to split the focus between your family and friends and the scenery. The trick is to choose one subject, and fill your camera’s frame with it. Remember that a canvas print will be wrapped around the edges, so leaving some ‘dead space’ around the edges is always a good idea.

You can also try using the ‘Rule of Thirds’ to compose your photo. This rule of thumb imagines the frame of your photo divided into nine squares, and that the main pints of interest of your photo be aligned with the places that the imaginary lines of the squares intersect. This is often a fast way of creating a photo that has good energy and tension to it, unlike a simply centred photo which can often appear flat and boring.

The basic trick is, take photos with purpose instead of relying on chance. Your personal art gallery will thank you!