Archive for the ‘Art Ideas to Steal’ Category
There’s something special about graffiti street art. Some see it as an eye sore, a form of vandalism, a crime. But some street art is so interesting and artistic it belongs in an art gallery. Some of the best graffiti art I have ever seen outside of New York is in Venice, California. One weekend I decided to hunt the neighborhood for some interesting “street art” – it wasn’t hard to find these works of art around almost every corner; in alleyways and doorways in the streets of Venice. For any connoisseur of high quality street art Venice is a true paradise.
Maybe you’re looking to buy graffiti art on canvas. Why not shoot your own? It’s fun and easy and you’ll get a great sense of satisfaction doing it yourself.
Using an inexpensive “point and shoot” (Canon PowerShot) I shot away at the various graffiti art pieces I found.
Here are some tips for finding graffiti art and turning photos of street art into pieces suitable for wall art:
The right location: find the best areas where quality graffiti art can be found. I’m not talking about “tags” and vandalized walls- I mean real street art. My favorite cities are in New York, Miami, Los Angles and Toronto. If you want to see a neat site that can help you search different areas checkout StreetArtLocator.com- the collection is a little light but it’s fun to use.
Composition: I like to shoot graffiti art in context- as opposed to shooting it close up. I like it when you can tell that it is graffiti street art on a wall. To make things even more interesting I also like to have the photo a little off-center. There really is no wrong way to shoot graffiti…it’s up to you.
Inspiration: Here’s an amazing gallery of graffiti art to get your creative juices flowing. One of our CanvasPop clients recently had these amazing graffiti pictures turned into canvas: (see below.)
So get out there, explore, have fun and shoot some amazing street art. When you’re done share it with us or upload it and turn it into a canvas art print at CanvasPop.
Graffiti Canvas Art, Triptych made by one of our clients. Photo credit Duane Brown, Toronto, Canada
Is this a miniature model of New York City? Nope. It's a regular photo transformed using Photoshop and a simple effect called 'Tilt-shift'.
The effect is called ‘Tilt-shift’ we think it would make an awesome effect to use for your canvas to photo prints. It’s surprisingly simple and really fun to do. All you need is Photoshop, and a picture that is shot from above (like from an office window looking down to street level works well). Usually it helps to have cars and people in the shot too. If you like the end result send it in to us to have it made into a cool photo to canvas print. Another idea might be to create a series of images from various places you’ve been and hang them side by side.
Just follow these easy steps:
1. Find an image you like with an elevated view point and a reasonable wide wide angle of view
2. Follow this great little step-by-step tutorial here (credit tiltshiftphotography.net)
3. When you’re done, upload and print your picture on canvas
We’d love to see what you can do with this. Be sure to send us pictures that you have worked with and show off you work. We might feature you on a future blog post. Have any ideas you want to share with us? Let us know by adding your comments below.
Luc Levesque founder of TravelPod holding his “logo on canvas” made up of 3000 mosaic photos.
Our friends at Travelpod (an Expedia company) needed some unique canvas photo art for their offices- so they came to CanvasPop for the solution.
TravelPod was the first site to enable its members to create online travel blogs which revolutionized the way people travel and share their adventures with the world. TravelPod.com remains, as always, a “for the travel community” service. Naturally they wanted to create some art that reflected what they are all about. TravelPod hosts thousands of pictures submitted by their community of bloggers. They took a random sampling of over 3000 images from their library and created a cool logo on canvas from them made up entirely from a mosaic of these images. From a distance it hard to tell that the “logo” is made up of nearly 3000 unique photos that act like pixels. They proudly display their logo mosaic in their lobby. Talk about a conversation piece!
Beautiful travel-themed canvas photos adorn the walls of TravelPod's office.
Next, they hand selected some original and beautiful vacation shots that look like they belong in National Geographic and we blew them up to 36″ x 54″ for their walls. Not only do the images tell a great story, they also reflect the TravelPod brand beautifully. As an added benefit these canvas prints actually help to reduce (even eliminate) echoes in their new open concept office digs.
What do your office walls say? Do you have a unique art concept you would like to put up in your office? Here’s an idea: collect pictures from your employees or fellow workers, create a cool logo on canvas, take pictures of your products- and turn them into art! Have fun with your company’s visual brand. Art makes any office space “more fun” at a relatively low cost.
