Father's Day

Special offer to blog readers: 15% off canvas art when you use the coupon code LOVEDAD

Father's day is approaching, And on june 19^th, I am sure all of us who where blessed with good dads will get a little nostalgic for that first and most important man in our lives. Not everybody has a good dad, but that fact just makes those of us who do all the more grateful for the family we lucked in to. I personally had a really amazing father. He was, and is, totally supportive and caring, and even if he can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, he always made it completely obvious that he loved me and my sister more than anything else in the world. And I forgot to call him on his birthday.

This is the thing about fathers. Somehow, even though they know you love them, and you know it means so much to them, they seem to rarely ever get told it. Maybe because they are men, and men are supposed to be less demonstrative than women, we think it would be better for these things to remain unspoken. No mater how much we think something is understood, however, it is always good to let someone know for sure how special and important they are to us.

It seems like we never forget Mom. We send her flowers or a gift, or at least a phone. We will never forget mothers day, because we are reminded months in advance. It is estimated that, on a national level, we spend 4.8 billion more on mothers day than on fathers day. Mothers are important, of course, but so are fathers, but it seems we tell them so less often. This June, maybe it is time to make up for past silences and make sure dad gets the message loud and clear.

Loud and clear does not have to mean unsubtle or not beautiful. At Canada on Canvas we can create a personalized canvas print or fine art paper print from any photo you like, so you can give Dad a very personal gift that he will love. Pictures, especially family photos, are records of all of the good times you have had together, and of how far you have come. We can create a canvas print from an old family photo, or we can design a custom collage on canvas of pictures from the photo album or of his grand-kids.

Photos of the grand-kids are another great gift idea for Dad. His grandchildren are the most precious gift you will ever give him, and seeing their smiling faces will always bring him joy. These do not have to be professional shots. Some of the best photos are candid snapshots that happen to record a special day or moment. Kids tend to make the best subject for candid shots, since they are vary active, and often most adorable at their most infuriating moments (it's their survival tactic).

At Canada on Canvas We are starting to offer a new service that we are calling 'Text Art'. It works this way: you send us a text document with the message that you want printed. It could be a collection of memories, A short letter or poem, or a collection of words that express how you feel. Let us know how you want it to look, and we will create a piece of text art to be printed on canvas. We will send you a proof, and if you like what we have done, we will print it for you!

Any text can be made into art. I have created two examples using the text of this blog post!

You know what dad would like best, Just be sure not to forget him on June 19^th, Father's day.

Text as Art

I have been seeing an interesting trend in the art that our customers at Canada on Canvas have recently been sending us. The trend is Text Art, and in reminds me both of the concrete poetry of the 1950's, and of the tradition of embroidered samplers. It is always interesting when old traditions get re-cycled and re-vamped by new technology.

Writing is perhaps our second-most common means of communication. In the past, we used to write letters to those we loved to share our feelings. Nowadays writing is more ephemeral. Whether it is an email or a text message, we read it and forget it.

But it seems that people still value heartfelt words, and look for ways to preserve their thoughts and send them to loved ones. Recently at Canada on Canvas, we have received many orders for canvas prints that are not photos or even images at all, they are made up entirely of text. Usually these will be collections of memories or thoughts about the person the gift is for, letting them know all the ways they are cared about and appreciated. We always say that when giving gifts it is the thought that counts, and these original people have discovered a way to give the thought itself!

Text is the perfect way to convey a message, but it is also a visual form that can be beautiful in itself. In the 1950's poets and artists experimented with the visual quality of text to produce pieced that combined the visual and the linguistic. With the renewed interest in typography and design, there has recently been a new interest in this type of art. Many digital artists are investigating the possibilities of text or font-based art with exiting results.

There are also some great tools on the internet that can generate text art out of text that you make. One is Wordle, which will create a “text cloud” based on the most used words in your text.

Here is one I created using the text of this blog post there are also many online tools that will create ascii art. They allow you to feed an image into the programme and it “writes” it using keyboard characters. Digital artists and designers can create personalized images that combine art and text in innovative and beautiful ways. At Canada on Canvas we can print these images on fine art paper or canvas, creating one of a kind gifts or wall decorations.

Fathers Day is coming up in June, and what better way to let dad know what you really mean to him than with a canvas print cataloguing the memories that you treasure, or the lessons he has taught you. Often these things go unspoken...but they deserve to be recorded and remembered.

Classic Art Prints from Canada on Canvas

At Canada on Canvas we we know how important art is in people's lives. Art can make you happy, it is something beautiful that can be enjoyed by everyone. Canada on Canvas believes that everyone can be and artist. We know this because very day we create Fine Art giclees from the stunning photos and art images send us by our customers. We also host an online art gallery of Canadian artists, helping them with selling their art more easily. We believe that the single best thing about Giclee printing is that it can help make art available to everyone.

We also know that Art, specifically painting and drawing, has a long history. Painters like Renoir, Monet, and Cezanne, people who worked in many different times in history and in countries in the world, are still loved today for the striking, beautiful, and sometimes unsettling images that they produced. Many of these images have become iconic, like Van Gogh's “starry night” , but many more are less well known, but are just as beautiful and interesting.

To view a selection of some of the best classic art of the past, visit the Classic Art Gallery at CanadaonCanvas.com, where we have a gallery of high resolution images of many great artists. The best part is, all of these images can be ordered as a giclee canvas print in a variety of sizes for only the price of the print. Because we use the highest quality of inks and canvas, and high resolution files of these classic art images, the canvas prints we make for you are as close as possible to owning the original painting.

Of course not everyone can own an original Morisot. The treasures of art are kept in museums so that they can be seen by everyone. But this art was made to be enjoyed, and a treasured painting is something you want to be able to see every day, not just once in a while. Fine art printing can let you own the painting for a tiny fraction of the the cost, and also allows and unlimited number of people to own the same painting, without taking away from the enjoyment of others. This is made possible due to fine art scanning technology, which convert the colours and brush strokes to digital information so that it can be reproduced digitally. The power to convert and image to digital has greatly increased the availability of fine art to its audience. A great example of this is the Google Art project, which has digitized and mapped dozens of galleries and thousands of artworks.

Digital images are great, but no one wants to look at a painting on a computer screen for very long. This is where giclee printing comes in. Before it was possible to print on canvas, the only way to hang a classic art piece in your own home was either to be a millionaire, or to purchase a poster print of the classic work. Paper, however, lacks the physical presence and texture of a classic painting. The giclee process has allowed printers a much greater choice in the materials they print on, and many companies not make canvas for the giclee process this canvas can be stretched in exactly the same manner in which artists and their assistants once stretched the canvas on which they worked. A canvas print is one step closer to the look and feel of the original and for this reason it has become a popular choice for art reproduction among artist and art lovers.

To view our Classic Art Gallery and order prints, please visit CanadaOnCanvas.com

Mothers day is coming up fast! if you are considering buying mom a personalized canvas print, or a print on canvas of a classic art work, be sure to use the code "lovemom" and recive a 15% OFF!

The code is valid until may 8th, but order now to make sure mom gets her gift on time!





Give her flowers that won't fade! order a beautiful canvas print!

Giclees Explained

Giclee is a word used to mean a fine-art printing process that uses digital images and high-end printers, inks, paper and canvas material. The word literally means “to spray” and is a reference to the way the printer sprays the ink onto the canvas. Giclee is a relatively new process that has been increasing in popularity among artists and photographers over the last ten years.

How It Works

The Giclee process starts with a digital image file. Most of the time we print from files taken from a digital camera. We can also print from scans, or digital art created on the computer or though a combination of scanning, photography, and digital imaging programs. The image is prepared for printing. It is sent to the printer, and the image is sprayed on a “substrate” (paper or other material) using pigment-based inks.

The word “Giclee” is also used more specifically to refer to printing on canvas using the Giclee process. Since Giclee printers can print on a wide variety of materials, it is popularly used to reproduce fine art, or make photographs into canvas pieces. The image is sprayed onto canvas, and the canvas is stretched on a wooden frame.

In order to create Giclees on canvas, the canvas print is taken by a framer and “gallery wrapped” to create the traditional look of an artist's canvas. (gallery wrapping refers to a canvas being wrapped or stretched around a wooden frame. This is the method that artists have been using for centuries to prepare their canvases for painting and hanging. Many paintings in museums are mounted using this same process) the canvas can then be framed using almost any type of frame, or left unframed for a more modern look.

Alternatives to Giclee:

There are other ways to produce printed artwork. Previous to the development of Giclee, artists used four-colour offset lithography to produce copies of their work. This process is still used, and is more economical for large print runs, but due to the difficult and time-consuming setup involved, offset printers often require print runs of 1000 or more. For individuals or artists running on-demand businesses, Gilcee are much more economical.

Artwork can also be transferred to canvas using a chemical canvas-transfer process. This works quite well, but it requires a printed original that can be sacrificed, since the process strips the inks out of the print and transfers it to the canvas. This is a physical rather than a digital process, it can only be done once, and the image can not be re-sized for the size of the original. It is quite effective for mounting posters that deserve a more elegant display, but it is not recommended for irreplaceable originals, and it is not actually a reproduction method, since you start with one print and end with one canvas.

Advantages to Giclees

The major advantage to the Giclee process is its accessibility and quality. With this process, it is possible for anyone to make almost any image into a fine art print or canvas. Professional artists can use it to reproduce work and sell to more customers, photographers can use it to create beautiful displays of their shots, and others can use it to make art out of family photos, great vacation photos, or any image they just happen to like. Because the setup for Giclee is digital, it is no problem to do single prints. There is no time-consuming chemical process or expensive setup, but the high quality of the pigment-based inks, the precision of the printer, the fine texture of the material and the high quality available from digital files insures that the print rivals other processes in colour, detail, and texture.

If you are starting with a physical image, whether an old photograph, a poster or a painting, the image can be scanned to create a digital copy, and then printed using the Giclee process. The quality of the final product will depend on the quality of the scan. The improvement in digital scanners means that paintings, photos, negatives, and slide can yield very excellent results. A major benefit of digital reproduction is that it you can increase and decreasee the size easily, making both posters and art cards, large canvases and small, from the same image.

Please visit out site at canadaoncanvas.com for moer information and to order your giclees

Rules Of Composition

Rules, Rules! I hear you say. Not in this day and age!

No-one want s to be told what to do, especially when it comes to creative expression, but everyone wants to know how to do it better. There are things to be learned from even the most outdated compositional techniques (they where, after all, perfected over hundreds of years). So as long as we all realize that rules are meant to be broken, let's see what we can learn.

The rule of thirds:

The rule states that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would.

The rule of thirds for portraits is that the subject's eyes should be positioned at the one-third mark from the top of the frame.

Rabatment of the Rectangle:

This is another (strangle named) rule for dividing up pictorial space. It is based on the idea that each rectangle contains 2 squares, one built from one of the shorter edges and the second form the other. This rule states that important

compositional elements should be placed along the inside edges of these imaginary squares to create visual tension.

the golden rectangle is a special case of rabatment. The squares made by the short side divides the rectangle into thirds that are the same ratio as the original rectangle.

“if it's not good enough, you're not close enough”

It is a good idea to focus in on the important part of your picture, give the viewer all the good stuff and none of the filler...unless of course the background context gives important details or positioning in the frame creates tension....like all rules, this one works well, except when it doesn't.

Colours:

Sometimes a colorful image is not one with a lot of different colours, but one that has a lot of one colour. This is one advantage of really focusing in on your subject, you can get a lot of one very vibrant colour without the distraction of other elements. Also, a scene in which there is a lot of one colour often makes an interesting and pleasing composition.

Black and White:

What makes a good black and white photo is a complete tonal range. This means that the whites white in the image is pure white, and the blackest black is pure black. This does not mean that there has to be an equal amount of blacks and whites in the image. Although there can be, you can also take very dramatic photos that are mostly dark or mostly white. Images with a lot of dark tones are referred to as “low-key” and images with a lot of paler hues are called “high-key”. However, even in these images it is important to have a complete tonal range.

Complimentary Colours:

Every colour has it's opposite, and when these composites are put together, they enhance each-other. Here are a list of complimentary colour pairings.

Red and green

blue and orange

yellow and violet

if you can create compositions using predominately one pair of these colours, the colours will appear very vibrant.

Of course, often what is most important about a picture is not that it has textbook composition, but that it captures a moment that has become a treasured memory. Pictures of loved one and special times have something that no amount of composition can make up for, and that is why they are our favorites!

Selling YOUR Art

Our Artist's Gallery Program is a great way to make your art available online, and make money without hassle. All you need to do is create an account, and you can direct interested buyers to your page, where they can order prints-on-demand of your work. This is a detailed run-through of how it works. For a quick overview see the page on our site.

Physical art galleries have many advantages. they are social meeting places and they allow viewers to be in the presence of the work in real life. Galleries also exist in only one place, so the work they display is only ever available to a select number of people who happen to be in the right place at the right time. Online galleries, on the other hand, have the potential to be seen by millions of people all over the world. Google's new Art Gallery Project is an example of how major art galleries are taking advantage of that very fact.

The Artist Gallery Program provides local artists with an online space to display their work and sell on-demand prints. This allows artists to take advantage of our expertise in creating custom art works on canvas and fine art paper and our shipping system. Artists can sell reproductions to customers all over Canada and the USA without the time commitment and cost of printing and shipping themselves. This gives you more time to do other things, like make work!

Get Started

1) Register online at Canada on Canvas. Please ensure you have entered your billing address, so we know where to send you your checks! Please note that at this point you are registering as a customer. We will create you artist account later.

2) Send us an email indicating that you want to be part of the Artist Gallery Program. Include a link to your website, if you have one, or 5 examples of your work.

3)We will send you an email once your account has been created. You can then log on to your account and upload high resolution JPGs of your artwork.

How to Upload:
1) Log on to you account
2) Click the "My Uploads" tab at the top of the screen
3) Click on the "browse" button and select the files from your computer, then hit "upload". (the file type must be JPG, and the maximum file size is 16 MB)
4) Once the image has been uploaded, click the "add to my gallery" button under the image.




Complete your profile

Your customers will want to know some information about you and your work. Completing your profile will give them some extra information if they are curious.
All of this information can be entered under the "My Gallery" tab in your profile.
You can include a Bio by in the "Gallery Settings" section. This will let people know a little more about you and the ideas and experience behind your work.
In "My Gallery" you will see two words under each image you have uploaded, "edit and "del"


If you click edit, you will be taken to a page where you can enter a description of the work and keywords to help people search.

clicking "del" will remove the image from the gallery.
This is also the page where you adjust your pricing.
Don't forget to hit "save" at the bottom of the screen when you are done!



Pricing

Now you get to define the price we will sell your work for. Canada On Canvas makes its money from the printing cost, so you may increase the price by adding a percent of the printing cost, all of which you will receive. We set the base price at printing plus 10%, so if you do not adjust the price you will receive ten percent of the printing cost whenever your work sells.

Since we offer your customers the option of ordering your canvas prints in a variety of sizes an media, the base price is variable. This is why your commission is a percentage and not a strait dollar amount. An example might make this clearer.

If you upload an image and leave the price as "base price", and someone orders a 16X20 gallery wrap, they will pay $121.00 (before taxes and shipping). You will receive $11.00. If they order a 20X30 gallery wrap, they will pay $161.70, and you will receive $14.70.

If, however, you set the percentage in the drop-down menu to 30%, they the customer would see the price as $154.00 for a 16X20, and you would receive $44.00 (30+10(base commission)=40% of printing price).

Getting Paid

If your account balance reaches $100.00 in any month, we'll send your payment before the end of the following month via check or PayPal. For example, if your account balance reaches the payment threshold during August, we'll send you a payment at the end of September.

if you have further questions please check our FAQ, or contact us.