kirava – Help in choosing art

June 7, 2017June 29, 2017

Avoid prints ruined by resizing

You can sometimes came across at cheap prints online shops that sell paintings reproductions for very cheap size. But if you pay attention you will notice that all prints and canvases of all painters are offered with the same sizes.

Ofcourse different paintings even of the same artist can not be of the same size! That means they just crop a painting cutting out parts of it to feet their standard size canvases or prints and that is why they are so cheap.

Here is en example:

The Starry Night of Van Gogh is 74 cm x 92 cm originally and look like this:

But one shop is offering its prints in such incorrect deminsions like 12” x 8 ” so it becomes:

Or even a square version, that is totally strange:

Please remember this when choosing art prints! Look attentively on the sizes offered and check if the same sizes do not repeat for each painting and the image is preserved without cruelly cutting parts of it or resizing it disproportionately.

Here is correct dimensions canvas print of The Starry Night print from PrintArtel.com:

June 6, 2017June 15, 2017

Avoid oil painting reproductions cheating!

How oil painting fakes are being made

If you are looking to buy real oil painting reproductions of famous art pieces you should know the way how to avoid fraud here.

So what is the process of making a fake oil painting? The method is very simple. First of all a canvas print of an original painting, lets take “Sunset” of Monet, is being covered with just a few strokes of an acrylic gel medium top, just matching in colour some places on the picture that is printed on the canvas.

Later when the gel dries some kind of varnish can be applied to give it glossy of a real oil painting. And then this print of Monet is offered as an authentic oil painting reproduction for a very low price!

Very often you can see such fakes in many art shops (not online), they are usually look very smooth and little bit blurred unlike real oil paintings, and of course cheaper in price.

However, sometimes such fakes are being sold even for a very high price of some thousands of dollars. And in some cases some photography studios fools the customers buy offering them an “oil painted” portrait” that is just their photo covered with an acrylic gel.

And of course do not jump on offers of cheap oil paintings in the internet – you have no possibility to check if they are real unless you see them in live!

On the other hand some shops truly state that their prints can be covered with acrylic gel to give it an oil look and they do not give i as real painting but offering such a service for the buyer on their choice. Then everything is ok here and nothing to worry.

Any way the best way to obtain a real oil painting is to find an artist in your area where you live, at an art school or art courses or ask among your friends and relatives. It is more lengthy process but finally a hundred percent real and authentic oil painting is guaranteed!

May 30, 2017June 13, 2017

The Genius of Van Gogh

Impressionist Legacy

As we mentioned in article about impressionism, a piece of art that evokes more feeling in its viewers is very popular in modern times. After impressionists made revolution in art introducing a new way of seeing, many art movements evoked after and on of them was Van Gogh painting style that is generally called post-impressionism.

Though he never exhibited with them, Van Gogh was influenced by his friendship with Impressionists. After seeing their paintings in Paris, he began to use brighter colors and broken brushstrokes. However he differed from them in one important way. As he wrote in 1888, “Instead of trying to render what I see before me, I use color in a completely arbitrary way in order to express myself powerfully”.

Inner world on the canvas

Van Gogh aimed at then the inner spirituality of man and nature led to a fusion of style and content that resulted in dramatic, imaginative, rhythmic, and emotional canvases that convey far more than the mere appearance of the subject. He used an impulsive, gestural application of paint and symbolic pure colors to express subjective emotions.

Van Gogh started to use simple pure colors that had not been seen before on the canvases. Before Impressionists and Van Gogh paintings were is muted, formal, structured, and often done in strict rules to convey political and social ideas. Van Gogh was simply expressing himself, his feelings on the canvas. He was very direct, using expressive brushstrokes he was just painting, his style went far beyond conventions like perspective and so on.

Live art

Van Gogh Cafe Table — Cafe Table with Absinthe, Van Gogh

Also Van Gogh tricks the views you into thinking he or she is seeing a painting of a flower, when in reality there are simple abstract brush strokes. Let’s take his Irises painting – these painting generates inside of people the impression of seeing a field of Irises while not actually using all the forms and colors of an actual purple Irises. So his job was to make people feel like they see Irises in life, to make them have that sensation.

When you walk into a room full of paintings and one of them is a Van Gogh you can tell it apart by the way it seems to hover 3 feet in front of the wall and makes the rest of the room seem almost black and white. It is a special magic about them, and everything seems moving in his paintings.

So choosing prints of Van Gogh’s works is considered a very good taste and so it is one of the best options to decorate your walls with one or two of his masterpieces.

May 28, 2017June 13, 2017

Bright impressions of life

At all times people tend to decorate their homes with art that correspond to their inner mood and feelings. Today besides abstractionism or photography, there are classical art movements that still fit modern people inner world perfectly.

In fact classic art is effective to reflect emotions in its viewers as it is understand by everyone, unlike abstract art which is more subtle. Also old masters style seems to be too static now and outrun by photography. Impressionism in its turn aims to highlight bright moments of a happy life – moments which most of people had experienced.

Essence of Impressionism

Nympheas impressionism — Nympheas, Claude Monet

Often considered the first modern movement in painting, Impressionism was actually developed as a formal art practice in Paris in the 1860s prior to spreading throughout Europe and the US.

The students in the academies and the official Salon conveyed the three-dimensionality of forms by means of the subtle shading which was first perfected by the Renaissance masters. The Impressionists, on the other hand, evoked a sense of three-dimensionality by representing the dramatic contrasts of color which can be best observed in vibrant sunlight.

In seeking to capture visually the play of light and shadow and its transformations the Impressionists used rapid brushstrokes to produce paintings that looked rushed and unfinished as opposed to the well-rounded, glossy and polished forms and subtle shadings respected by the Academic system.

Similarly, rather than depicting a posed or characteristic angle of the objects painted, Monet and the Impressionists showed objects from uncharacteristic, and often, truncated perspectives. This truncation of subjects and objects, which is especially obvious in the paintings of Renoir and Degas, openly acknowledges the incompleteness of our field of vision and powers of representation.

A new way to see

Camille Pissarro art — Houses at Bougival, Camille Pissarro

In its day, Impressionism was considered a radical departure from tradition. Looking back, we can see that Impressionism was more than a departure – It changed the very nature of the way people think about art today.

This independence of Impressionists from official Salon and academies was reflected in the art market, which saw the rise of private dealers and growing numbers of bourgeois collectors. This was the rising revolution of Art. Painting of French impressionist were largely obtained by American private collectors at the first half of 20th century, which gave life to this art movement and it is sill very popular today.

To sum up, Impressionism is the root of all modern art, because it managed to release art from preconceived ideas, it changed not only the way life was depicted but the way life was seen.

May 26, 2017June 13, 2017

Print Artel – museum quality art prints

Print Artel advantages

PrintArtel.com is an online art shop powered by FineArtAmerica print-on-demand company.

In its turn FineArtAmerica or Pixels is a leading art marketplace and print-on-demand technology company that offers artists and art galleries sell prints of their paintings online.

Best prices

One of the biggest advantage of PrintArtel that it offers the best prices for its art prints. In the FineArtAmerica network artists and galleries set up their own mark-ups for prints and mostly they are pretty high.

PrintArtel offers word famous art with lowest mark-up possible and it does not affect quality of prints as FineArtAmerica manages same high quality printing process for everyone.

Basic prices for different wall art:

And here are a sample of prices for art prints of three different sizes:

As you can see prints starts from 16,35 and so other products like canvas prints have lower prices. So PrintArtel offers really best prices in the art industry for high quality art prints of classic paintings.

Carefully chosen paintings

A huge variety of choice of each painter frustrates customers – people got just lost and tired of choosing and making a decision what print is the best to order.

At PrintArtel all images are hand picked up from hundreds available. Only images of paintings without damages, not covered with cracks, dirt spots, scrapes and so on are chosen.

Money-back guarantee.

The most distinctive feature offered to all its shops like PrintArtel by FineArtAmerica is 30-day money-back guarantee. That is possible because of the high quality of production and excellent customer service that make customers happy with their orders.

See FineArtAmerica ratings screenshot from TrustPilot:

A variety of sizes and formats of prints:

All paintings offered by PrintArtel can be produced in the following formats:

Art prints and posters: 50 different sizes and seven different papers. Each print is produced using archival inks guaranteed to last for 75 years without fading or loss of color. Customize your poster with hundreds of different mats and frames, if desired.

Framed print: hand-crafted using premium papers, museum-quality frames and mats, and archival inks.

Canvas print: hand-crafted using premium cotton / poly canvases, pine stretcher bars, and archival inks.

Metal print: hand-crafted using 1/16″ thick aluminum.

Greeting Cards: 5″ x 7″ folded greeting cards. Our greeting cards are print 110 lb. paper stock using digital offset printers.

Cards may be purchased as single cards, packs of 10, or packs of 25. All greeting cards ship within 48 hours and include white envelopes for mailing and gift-giving.

Each card is coated with a UV protectant on the outside surface which produces a semi-gloss appearance.

The inside of each card has a matte white finish and may be customized with a text message up to 500 characters in length. The message is centered on the inside of the card and printed in black 18pt font. The artist’s name and the name of the image is printed on the back of each card.

Wide network of production centers

Orders are produced and shipped from print-on-demand fulfillment centers located in 5 countries. When a customer places and order it is automatically routed to the nearest manufacturing center to minimize shipping costs and speed up delivery times.

United States: Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Hendersonville, Austin.

Canada: Toronto.

United Kingdom: London, Glasgow

Europe: Boxtel in Netherlands

Australia: Sydney, Brisbane, Hawthorne.

Visit PrintArtel.com

May 24, 2017June 13, 2017

World famous art is still in fashion

Looking through different articles about home design in internet and printed magazines one can notice that almost everywhere examples of the wall decoration were only abstract paintings or just photos.

Albert Bierstadt Among the Sierra Nevada — Among the Sierra Nevada by Albert Bierstadt

Does decorating your home with framed prints of The Mona Lisa, Water Lilies of Monet, The Starry Night of Van Gogh, and so forth seem to be out of fashion or is it a sign of good taste?

In fact, the majority of people in the world use reproductions to decorate their homes. Using museum pieces is not tacky, why would anyone think it is silly to hang art prints on your walls, when the originals are viewed in museums by millions of people every year?

Having an appreciation for great art is admirable, and using it to decorate your home – well, how wonderful it would be to come home every day to some of the greatest works of art in the world.

To sum extend it is no different than listening to a recording of a famous musician instead of listening to them perform live. Sure, it’s not the original, but who can afford buying an original?

On the other hand purchasing prints of well know works like Mona Lisa, The Starry Night, Scream make sort of a bland statement about your aesthetic. “The art that speaks most to me is the top ten most widely-seen works in the world.” “I like things that the rest of the world has told me are good.”

By concentrating only on the well-known works, it makes others think the only reason those pictures are there is not because the person is fond of them, but because the person is trying to look as if being knowledgeable, which is especially ironic when you include the most famous, popular paintings that even the most uninterested in art can recognize. It looks like an attempt to appear educated, instead of a display of taste.

Argenteuil panitng — Railway Bridge At Argenteuil, Claude Monet

So the right way to do is choosing world famous artist but also less known of his work, besides the popular ones. You can hung on your wall Monet’s “The Railway Bridge At Argenteuil” and then someone ask who is the artist and you say it is Monet who painted Water Lilies and then you can show your good taste and your intelligence and real interest in art. By the way this painting was last sold for 41 million USD.

To sum up, decorating walls with prints of famous artists paintings is a nice way to add some comfort, coziness and aesthetic atmosphere in your home.