Printing your photos on cushions could be just the thing. When it comes to a personalized cushion, let your imagination run away with you! Words, abstract photos, extreme close ups or even children’s own artwork on cushions can make great presents.

If you’re an interior design professional, then this could be what you’re looking for.

• The materials and finish of our photos on cushions are of the very highest quality.
• Your image is printed onto a soft, suede-like material, with the cushion back being made of heavy weight cream-coloured cotton drill.
• The cushion pads themselves are 100% duck feather.

Photos on cushions

And with average artistic outgoings of £52.42 a month, or £12 a week, this is nearly double what is spent on our favourite tipples at home (£6.20 a week), buying newspapers and magazines (£2.80) or even household essentials like bread and milk (£5.20).²

The research reveals artistic pursuits fulfil a fundamental need, with 44 per cent of people participating to improve their work-life balance and a fifth to make up for having a dull day job (22 per cent). Close to three quarters (74 per cent) have a creative hobby because it makes them happy or because they find it interesting (73 per cent).

Photography leads the way

Photography is the top artistic pastime, with one in three people listing it as a passtime. Given the consistently high quality of the images we recieve for our Photos on Canvas service, that doesn’t come as a great surprise to us.

A fifth of Brits are involved in making music, while one in seven are avid writers (16 per cent) or filmmakers (15 per cent).

Digital Britain

And many Britons are heading online to express themselves, drawn by the ability to share things (50 per cent) and the ease with which this can be done (33 per cent).

Two fifths of Britons (38 per cent) share their own photography online, while – in a hope to be the next Arctic Monkeys – one in 10 shares their own music (10 per cent) or films (eight per cent).

It seems we are nation of Bloggers too.  More than four million people in the UK – seven per cent – write their own blog, rising to one in 10 people under 34-years-old. Begging the question of who reads it all?

first direct Head of Marketing Paul Say said: “It used to be said everyone has a good book inside them, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg for 21st-century Britain. For millions, our interest in photography, film or poetry is an important way to bring additional colour and creativity to our lives.

“One in three sees the arts as an important source of income for the economy. And more than two fifths of us agree the arts, from classical music to comedy, are part of what makes Britain great – as varied and colourful as Britons themselves.”

So there you have it Art is what makes Britain great.  We’ll drink to that.

One of the best ways to make some money from your own original art or photography is to have high quality prints made that you can sell for a fraction of the cost of the original.
Having a supply of high quality canvas prints of your art opens up a range of possibilities for attracting many more customers than gallery showings or art competitions can ever achieve.

Managing your stock and fulfilment

The trick is to keep your investment in stock  and the time you spend packing and sending out canvases to a minimum.
The last thing you want is a garage full of prints that you are never going to sell or a bedroom full of packing material!

For that reason you need to find a canvas print supplier who can not only guarantee the highest quality reproduction and materials, but who you can also trust to deal with the fulfilment side of the operation for you, sending the canvas prints directly to your customer’s door.
Here at YouAreArt we can do just that!

Selling Prints Globally

A good way to market them is to sell your prints directly through auction services like Ebay where you can set a minimum bid.
You can also advertise the prints you are selling through your own website and social network outlets like Face Book and Twitter. Local bulletin board services like Craigslist can be utilized to drum up business for your prints as well, especially since you can post thumbnails of your work and links to your website on these services.

Regardless of which avenue you to choose to market your work online, the most important factor is proper description of your prints in the key word tag boxes and captions. Your goal is to select words that might be used by your target audiences — the ones traditionally are attracted to your artwork –by including detailed information about the subject, size, availability and price.

Selling Prints Locally

Ideal places to promote in low-cost prints are not necessarily galleries and art stores but settings where people are relaxed and at ease, like restaurants,  pubs, coffee houses, hairdressers  and beauty salons.

Canvas print by YouAreArt.co.uk displayed in a pub

Print a selection of your images onto canvas and look around for venues where you think your work would be appreciated by the clientele and fits naturally with the rest of the decor. By offering the business owner or staff a percentage on sales, you can effortlessly recruit a new advocates for your prints.

Doctors offices and  reception rooms are another place you can find willing wall space for your prints to be displayed with prices, and not just the customers but often the staff purchase prints after they have seen them in daily at their workplace.
Also check with nearby law firms and estate agents and offer to adorn their walls with your fabulous canvases. Such venues can develop a niche market where new additions of your work are eagerly anticipated.

And don’t forget the unwritten rule of print sales, which is that if you sell a large number of limited edition prints, the value of the original goes up expotentially, so not only does your investment in the prints payoff but you can fetch quite a bit more for your original creation.

Whether you have some great old family photos that you want to display in a novel way, or are an enthusiastic digital photographer, printing your photos on canvas is a great way to display them.

Putting your Photos on canvas is also a very good way to personalise an office space.
Hanging large canvas prints of logos, or projects the company is working on in reception, make far more sense than having a photo of a whale!

As the great majority of  portraits are being commissioned of one person, by another  - as presents,  by parents having portraits of their children, etc. etc. – the photos we tend to see are what other people feel are good photos of the subject, rather than what those subjects feel are good photos of themselves. As a result they are largely homogenous, projecting people at their most presentable!

But what sort of photos would people choose if they were to choose a photo of themselves?
It was this question that Nina Jones, a 17-year-old student from Buckinghamshire, begun thinking about.

“I spend a disproportionate amount of time on Facebook each evening, looking at the profile pictures of people I don’t know,” Nina says.
“I found it quite interesting the motivations behind certain people’s choices. It snowballed into an idea and a hypothesis and then an entry into ‘So You Want To Be a Scientist?’.”

Working with Bernie Hogan of Oxford University’s Internet Institute, Nina started a Facebook page for her experiment, gathering over 3,500 members, who shared their reasons for choosing their profile pictures.

Nina and Dr Hogan began to see some interesting trends.

Trends

“The theory we’re working with is that people want to make their Facebook profile attractive to other people, but it turns out that they do that in very different ways,” Dr Hogan said.

For instance:

• men were 50% more likely to have retouched their photo than women, and 20% less likely to be smiling in it.
• Being in a couple raised the chances of a smiling photo by some 35%.
• Respondents under age 30 were twice as likely to have a profile picture showing them at a party, while those over 30 and those in a couple were far more likely to have a child’s photo as their profile picture.
• Overall 1% of people showed themselves smoking and 5% showed themselves drinking, leading Dr Hogan to speculate on the social role that profile pictures can play.

YouAreArt Facebook profile photo. What does this say about us?

“Facebook is becoming one of the de facto ways that we present ourselves to friends and family,” Dr Hogan said.

“This photo has become the new calling card, the first point of contact, so (it) is important for understanding what it is we want to show off to each other online.”

I wonder how many people use the portrait we created for them as their profile picture. Lots we hope!

You can read more about this and hear Nina talking about her project on the  ‘So you want to be a scientist ‘ page BBC website .

Snail

By the way the competition was actually won by a lady who discovered that snails have a homing instinct.  Good work snail lady.

We are this week’s spin the bottle prize. To enter, simply register with then at:
http://www.dorsetcereals.co.uk/category/spin-the-bottle

Not only do you get the chance to win one of our pop art portraits, but the little bottle makes a rather satisfying sounds as it spins. We like it anyway.

Win a portrait from YouAreArt

Three recent papers on the subject have revealed some very interesting discoveries.

Simple Illustration Portrait

1) Natural ‘Barcodes’ Help Us Recognize Faces

According to a study from UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, our faces contain ‘barcodes’ of information which help us recognise people

Faces are unique in their ability to convey a vast range of information about people, including their gender, age, and mood. For social animals, such as humans, the ability to locate a face is important as this is where we pick up many of our cues for social interactions.

While recognising a person’s face is a complex process, the first steps to processing visual information in the brain are thought to be more basic and to rely on the orientation of features such as lines.

By manipulating images of the faces of celebrities such as Coldplay’s Chris Martin and actor George Clooney, researchers showed that nearly all the information we need to recognise faces is contained in horizontal lines, such as the line of the eyebrows, the eyes and the lips. Further analysis revealed that these features could be simplified into black and white lines of information – in other words, barcodes.

“Exposed skin on our forehead and cheeks tends to be shiny whilst our eyebrows and lips and the shadows cast in the eye sockets and under the nose tend to be darker,” said Dr Dakin, the study’s co-authour. “The resulting horizontal stripes of information are reminiscent of a supermarket barcode.”

Supermarket barcodes were developed as an efficient way of providing information: straight, one-dimensional lines are far easier to process than two-dimensional characters such as numbers. In a similar way, our faces may have evolved to allow us to convey effectively the information needed to recognise them.

The researchers analysed various natural images, such as flowers and landscapes, and found that faces are unique in conveying all their useful information in horizontal stripes. The barcode pattern has many advantages: it can be recognised efficiently by the visual parts of the brain; is easy to locate in complex scenes; and appears to be resistant to changes in the overall appearance of the face.

The research may also help explain our ability to see faces where they do not exist, for example in clouds or in flames.

“Our faces are fairly symmetrical, and it is this symmetry that creates horizontal patterns,” explains Dr Dakin. “Local symmetry can occur in natural phenomena, such as fire, and it could be that our brains recognise a barcode when a face isn’t really there.”

Our faces contain 'barcodes' of information which help us recognise people. (Credit: Image courtesy of University College London)

Research: Co-authored by Dr Steven Dakin of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology published April 4 2009 in the Journal of Vision,

2) Two fixation points are needed for face recognition

Previous studies had indicated that during face recognition, we look most often at the eyes, nose and mouth, and a new study has pinpointed exactly where our eyes land when we see a face.

The researchers found this out by showing volunteers frontal-view images of faces, one at a time, and recording their eye movements with an eye tracker. The researchers were able to measure fixation points when the faces were shown (i.e. where on the face the volunteers looked).

In addition, the researchers limited the number of fixations that volunteers could make when looking at the faces to one, two, three or an unlimited number, by replacing the face with an average of all of the faces in the study when the number of fixations exceeded the limit. This is done while the eyes are “in flight” to the next fixation – when we are virtually blind until we land at the next spot.

The results, reported in the October issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, showed that during face recognition, the first two places we look at are around the nose, with the first fixation point being slightly to the left of the nose. This was surprising, as previous research has suggested that the eyes may be the critical point for face perception. In this study, it was not until the third fixation that participants looked at the eyes.

The researchers also found that two fixations are optimal for face recognition. Given the same amount of time to view each face, the volunteers performed better when they were allowed to make a second fixation than when they could look at only one fixation.

The authors noted, “This suggests that the second fixation has functional significance: to obtain more information from a different location.”

The authors conclude that the nose “may be the ‘center of the information’, where the information is balanced in all directions, or the optimal viewing position for face recognition.”

When asked to determine if the face that test subjects were looking at was one that they had just seen a few minutes prior, test subjects first "fixed" their eyes near the centre of the nose, and when they moved their eyes to the second location on the face, it too was usually near the center of the nose. (Credit: Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science)

Research: Cognitive Scientists Janet Hui-wen Hsiao and Garrison Cottrell from the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center at the University of California, San Diego

3) The eyes are key to recognising a face

According to a study from a researcher at the University of Barcelona, our brain extracts important information for face recognition principally from the eyes, and secondly from the mouth and nose.

Imagine a photograph showing your friend’s face. Although you might think that every single detail in his face matters to recognize him, numerous experiments have shown that the brain prefers a rather coarse resolution instead, irrespective of the distance at which a face is seen.

Until now, the reason for this was unclear. By analyzing 868 male and 868 female face images, the new study may explain why.

The results indicate that the most useful information is obtained from the images if their size is around 30 x 30 pixels. Moreover, images of eyes give the least “noisy” result (meaning that they convey more reliable information to the brain compared to images of the mouth and nose), suggesting that face recognition mechanisms in the brain are specialized to the eyes.

Oil painting by YouAreArt.co.uk Our brain extracts important information for face recognition principally from the eyes.

Research: Keil et al. “I Look in Your Eyes, Honey”: Internal Face Features Induce Spatial Frequency Preference for Human Face Processing.

Our experience with our Simple Illustration style portraits is that to get the portrait to look like the person, the face shape also plays a very important part.

The relative position of the eyes, nose and mouth remains static, based on the photo, but we often manipulate the shape of the face in line with the client’s wishes.
This would fit in with the research outlined above – if the key areas of eyes, nose and mouth are in the correct relative positions, then the shape of the face can be seen as more fluid.
We can thin the face to flatter, or simply change it to get more of a ‘sense’ of the person than the photo we are working from can give us.

This Blog post is based on several articles published on http://www.sciencedaily.com

1) Art Outside, Texus, USA

Art Outside hosts a wild yearly event in Austin, Texas that welcomes unusual community-based art with a 3-day, one-of-a-kind celebration in an amazing outdoor setting. Art Outside embraces the passions of Art Seen Alliance,  a group of dedicated artists that produce unique festivals that blend all forms of art, especially those that promote sustainability.

2) 3 Harbours Arts Festival, Edinburgh, UK

3 Harbours Arts Festival is a 10-day community event near Ediburgh that is so big it has to be in held at multiple locations — namely Prestonpans, East Lothian, Cockenzie and Port Seton. Featuring “art in unusual places,” the festival has over 300 artists displaying their work in 80 different venues.

Over 50 entertainment events are held in conjunction with the celebrations. Hands-on participation is encouraged and many booths feature do-it-yourself arts and crafts, making it a fun event for the whole family.

3) The Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition (TOAE), Toronto, Canada

This exhibition, which is in its 49th year, welcomes over 100,000 visitors annually to see the talented artists — both established and budding — who practice both traditional and experimental art. This three day event has free admission and is supported by a host of community sponsors who underwrite the competition and contest prizes that are awarded to participating artists.

4) Ten Days on the Island, Tasmania, Australia

Tasmania is the host of this cultural extravaganza that embraces the cultural identity of this unique slice of the “land down under.” The series of events takes places at multiple venues around the island for, as the name suggests, a 10-day period. Guests performers from all over the world are invited to share their cultural expressions and learn about Tasmania. Since its inception in 2001, this brainchild of former State Premier Jim Bacon has attracted over 200,000 visitors annually to this remote corner of the world to celebrate their love of art.

5) Yokohama International Open-Air Art Fair, Yokohama, Japan

Just launched in 2009, the City of Yokohama in Japan had its first 3-day outdoor art event in Yamashita park that featured artists from the U.S. and Japan who offered paintings, photographs,  glass art and ceramics for sale. This event is a first for a culture that rarely has large art fairs, and although another date has not yet been scheduled, it was a resounding success and could well lead the other Japanese cities to sponsor outdoor art fairs in the future.

The increasing popularity of outdoor festivals like Burning Man and Flip Side are inspiring new venues for visionary art by participants in these events.

As a result, art grants are becoming available to help visionary artist associated with these festivals to produce work at is beyond the scope of their own financial means. Grants totaling up to $500,000 have been awarded to help cover a portion of the cost associated with creating “outsider art” which includes such displays as guerrilla art, street theatre, and musical events.

The Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF)

The Black Rock Arts Foundation was set up by the Burning Man art department, known as the Artery, an LLC that establishes the theme for each year’s event. Although the BRAF does not finance installations for the event itself, they rely on donations for a significant portion of the funding and also arrange for presentation of work created through the grants to be shown at outside venues to generate additional income for grants.

Supported by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, the BRAF was established in 2001 to promote community-based art installations and is a nonprofit corporation with tax exempt status. The types of projects supported by these grants place heavy emphasis on interactive pieces that prompt the viewer to take action. This means they encourage art that is experienced in more ways than just visually, i.e., it is also heard, touched, or even smelled. Community building, activism, education and entertainment are all valued in projects supported by these grants.

Scrap Eden

In collaboration with the San Francisco Department of the Environment, BRAF has developed a program called Scrap Eden that encourages artworks made from reclaimed or recycled materials. A recent project was awarded to pair up local artist with at-risk youth to create community art for civic parks and recreation centers.

In 2008, Scrap Eden created a “Playa-Garden” featuring a backyard motif with a clothesline strewn with colorful pieces of fabric, each with a different word or phrase on it. The audience was encouraged to rearrange the fabrics into poems, sentences or even add their own word to the exhibit.

This event has grown in popularity, and now includes other Burning Man outreach groups connected with Black Rock City, Nevada, the town that grows up each year around the festival. They host lectures, craft projects, discussions, mixers and parties in collaboration with “Playa-Garden” events.

This year, the BRAF is working with San Francisco artist Paul Cesewski to create the Composting Contraption, a human-powered, interactive, kinetic artwork designed to travel to local festivals, street fairs, schools and farmers’ markets to motivate and inspire the practice of composting. This exhibit is becoming popular at events like Maker Faire in San Matteo, California, a two-day, family friendly festival that celebrates the do-it-yourself mindset.

Well, for as start it’s a shame to have those fantastic photos sitting unseen on your hard drive, or hidden in a drawer as photo prints. Let them shine by printing your photos on canvas.
With the advances in digital printing and image manipulation, even your old photos can be improved so that when the photo is printed on canvas it looks better than ever.

When you send us your photos to print on canvas we take a look at it to see how we can improve it. This can include cropping, retouching, colour balancing and adjusting the shadows brightness and contrast. With judicious pruning even an ordinary photo can become extraordinary when it is a Photo on Canvas.

One idea is to split a single image up into multiple canvases. Stunning effects can be created. A traditional approach is to slice an image into three and create a Triptych, but why stop there? Lots of small canvas prints all hung together with similar gaps between them can effectively cover a large wall, creating a focal point. As it’s your own photo that you’re printing on canvas not only do you get a superb artwork, but you also get to show off to your friends!