Art Prints For Home
Decorating
Joel Walsh
With the new craze for interior decorating inspired by "home makeover"
television programs, more and more people are tempted to hire a professional
decorator, even if they can't afford one. Simplicity: the Art of
Home Decorating
If you're thinking about breaking the bank for the sake of a beautiful room,
think again. You don't have to spend as much as an oil tycoon to have a home
every bit as beautiful. Here's why:
A pair of human eyes can only take in so much, no matter how much is put before
them.
The secret is not to aim for beauty that comes from opulence, but for a simple
beauty. And simple beauty is usually less expensive.
The best way to go for simple beauty in interior design is to make the
focus of a room a single well-chosen decorative element.
Art Prints: Simple Home Décor Focus
But what single beautiful element could you actually afford?
Unless you happen to get really, really lucky at a crafts fair or estate sale,
there's only one sure way to buy high taste on a low budget. Not original
paintings or expensive wallpaper. Just a well-chosen print of a painting or
photograph that reflects your style and taste and matches your room.
Surprised at such a simple answer to the decorating conundrum? Perhaps, like
most people, you do not understand what art prints really are.
What Art Prints Are Not
Art prints are not posters.
Posters are made using paper stock similar to what magazines use. Art prints are
made using special heavier print stock especially for prints.
Posters often play rather loose with the original image, cropping it, resizing
it, adding text, or even changing shading. Prints will typically come much
closer to the original, and will rarely crop the original image or alter its
appearance significantly.
Posters are vastly less durable than art prints. You can expect a high-quality
print to last decades without showing signs of age.
Art prints are not reproductions (though they are close).
Reproductions of a work of art, usually a painting, involve using exactly or
nearly exactly the same brush strokes and materials, which is why they are so
expensive. Prints, meanwhile, reproduce the look of the artwork without
reproducing every detail of it. For instance, even though many prints of
paintings use textured surfaces or even artificial brush strokes, the exact
brush strokes of the original are not copied.
Reproductions also have to be conserved as carefully as original paintings in
most cases, or they will fade. High-quality prints are given protection against
fading, either in the form of a coating to the surface, or a Plexiglas case.
Reproductions, being paintings, are not very durable, and must be treated with
special care. Prints, though not indestructible, are more likely to survive
accidents. Some prints can even be washed with glass cleaner.
Of course, no art print will be a good anchor for a room's décor if it's not
well chosen. Unfortunately, many people either don't have any particular tastes
when it comes to art or décor, or else do not trust their own taste. Luckily,
the internet puts the accumulated knowledge of thousands of decorators, artists,
and art experts at your disposal. Thanks to the internet, your home can look as
good as the ones on TV.
Joel Walsh writes for a1-paintings (http://www.a1-paintings.com)
with a buying guide for art prints:
http://www.a1-paintings.com/hot-topics/affordable-paintings-art-prints-buying-guide.html