pugdog
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Apr 24, 2007, 12:20 AM
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Using Photos for artwork part 2 (Old Masters)
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As noted in the previous installment, the use of your own printer and special paper (fabric, textured, matte, etc) can produce incredibly realistic and striking results for minimal cost.
There are people selling reproductions of the old masters in dollhouse scale, framed, for $10-$20 each, and selling a LOT more of them than I'd have expected -- considering a quick search on google will turn up dozens of sites with reproductions, and if you want to be completely strictly legal, many images (scans) in the public domain.
These images are in sufficient resolution to print out extremely well.
You can put them into your own frames, or make custom frames simply and easily. You don't need complicated tools to work in dollhouse scale. The scale lumber is less than a quarter of an inch thick, and cuts easily with a "copper" style tool and a sharp razor blade. A little sanding and you end up with extremely nice frames.
Commercial frames can be purchased, or you can browse dollar and thrift shops for all sorts of pieces that would make custom frames.
While true-to-life replicas would strive to make the painting the same scale size as the original, we all know that reproductions -- even good ones -- and high-quality posters are often all different sizes. So, don't worry about the scale. Make the print fit the space you need it to -- larger or smaller.
And, if the reproduction or photo is a custom piece or simple photo (as in modern decorating) the size doesn't matter at all! Movie posters run a whole range of sizes. Posters run long and narrow, or panoramic. They can be small -- 8x10, 16x20, 18x24 or large 36x48 or bigger.
36x48 would be 3x4 feet, which would scale directly to 3x4 inches. That is quite large, and would cover most of a wall in a dorm room or back of a door.
For awhile "door posters" were sold, and some were quite clever. With the use of a camera and digital printer, you can make your own door posters to fit your doors, or make your own scenic wallpaper to fit your walls.
Some printer papers are fully waterproof! The inks don't run. Otherwise, you might have to coat them with a matte sealer before you try to glue them up on the wall.
Many, many sites offer miniature versions of movie posters that can be printed for decorations.
If you get mailers from the movie/video clubs, or keep your eye on magazines, you can often find images that when sealed and fastened to a piece of card stock make extremely decorative and convincing artworks.
Rather than $10-20 each, these reproductions cost you less than $2 and a little time to make. A sheet of high quality photo paper is about $1. A 4x6 sheet of paper can print out 2 large size images. Even with margins (and remember to leave a double width margin between two images). It can print out dozens of smaller sized 8x10 images.
A sheet of 8x10 paper can print quite a bit more, but the file size of the originals can get quite large.
While good quality images can be made at 72dpi, a resolution of at least 120 will give much better results. At 300 dpi, unless your image has a lot of detail and small areas, you are increasing the file size for limited return. Of course, perfectionists will disagree :)
When evaluating an image for use in a dollhouse, thumbnails are your best friend! If an image can attract your attention, and be seen clearly as a thumbnail, the larger version for printing will *probably* be OK. When an image is reduced, so is all the detail. Images therefore need to depend on shapes and colors, not details for impact. Sunsets with with broad strokes of color, or a single flower, will have much more impact at small scale than a field of daisies. A few larger subjects will reproduce better than an image with a lot of little figures. So, if the image looks good as a thumbnail, it will PROBABLY translate well into your dollhouse.
In a quest for photos, or images, there are many public domain image archives -- royalty free, copy right free, or copyrighted/royalty free or some other combination. The bottom line is you are free to use them for whatever you want -- sometimes as long as you do not sell them, others the artist wants a note, or something like that.
Of course, you can take your own photos, and then sell them as your own miniature art.
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