Most people approach home decor with the zeal of an interior designer – until they get to the walls. Much as they would love to hang original canvases and family oil portraits, budgetary restraints dictate otherwise. The result is a muddle of glossy photographs and store-bought prints, all displayed in mismatched frames.
But it is possible to hang original fine art in your living room. Thanks to canvas printers like the Epson 9800, any image that can be saved in digital format can be recreated as a magnificent work of art. It is the affordable way to go from “economy cheap” to “designer chic”.
Your artwork starts life as a digital file, either downloaded direct from a camera, or scanned in from a conventional photograph. But canvas printing is far more than just copying a photograph onto stretched cloth. Once in digital format, programs such as Photoshop allow for no end of customisation of the original. If you love the digital art you see in online galleries, you don’t have to pay for it – Photoshop allows you to create your own. If you want, your face can be almost unrecognisable by the time it is committed to print.
Yearn for an Old Master, but unable to afford Vermeer? You can still have that aristocratic portrait you dreamed of. Oil paint effects allow you to add texture using digital “brush strokes”. The image can be darkened, shadowed and softened. You can even create a classical background in place of a modern one. Printed onto artists’ canvas, and using the latest Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks, anyone’s face can become an oil painting!
For a more modern look, you can opt to have the design tinted to match your decor. Or why not choose sepia for a “Yesteryear” effect? For the ultimate in 1950’s retro chic, monochrome is hard to beat. The Ultrachrome K3 cartridge has three shades of black for this very purpose!
Digital special effects allow for all sorts of surprises on a child’s bedroom wall. Do you have a Doctor Who loving son? Then why not place him on an alien landscape? Or turn him into an alien himself. Photo manipulation allows for all sorts of surreal effects.
As the canvas is printed from a digital file, the original image doesn’t even have to be a photograph. Any original artwork – from a child’s first portrait of their mum to an art graduate’s final exam piece, can be uploaded. Size is no problem either, as professional scanners and the Epson 9600 printer will take care of any object up to 44” wide, with no loss of colour density.
Owning fine art is no longer a matter of hanging a tired copy of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” on the wall. Thanks to canvas printing, any home can have a gallery of originals.
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