4 tips on choosing art work for your home

Choosing a piece of art work for your home is an exciting process. You’ll want to ensure that you find a piece that reflects the style of your home, and that represents your character. It’s never a good idea to rush when making an art work choice. Wait until you find a perfect piece and ensure that it fits in with the interior design style of your home. Here are a few tips on choosing the right piece of art work for you.

Determine your budget

Before you start shopping, it can be a good idea to determine an approximate budget. If your budget is modest, this isn’t a problem; artwork doesn’t have to be expensive to be beautiful and affordable art is just as stunning. It is far more satisfying when you find a piece at a reasonable price and don’t have to break the bank! If you see something that only slightly exceeds your price range, but is just perfect, you may be willing to make the stretch!

Determine your style

Your style will depend on both your personal tastes and on the colour schemes and styles of your home. You might prefer a photography art piece, or perhaps some lettering of an inspirational or funny quote. Instead, you might like traditional paintings of nature, Pop Art or something completely abstract. Researching online can help you to decide on your preferred style if you’re not entirely sure. Attempt to colour match your artwork as much as you can to keep your chosen room co-ordinated.

Determine the size

The size of your chosen art piece will depend on your intended room and where you want to position it. When it comes to the living room, it’s a popular choice to position an art piece above the sofa. To scale the piece correctly, it’s a good idea to choose one large piece that’s approximately the same length as your sofa. Failing this, you could go for three or four smaller pieces hung in a horizontal line.

Hanging a smaller piece on a large wall can make it look lost or out of place. For a look that’s more appealing to the eye, choose a larger piece or a set.

Buy according to room

You should attempt to buy an art piece according to the room in which you’re going to place it. Living rooms and bedrooms tend to suit bolder colours or stand-out, feature pieces. Green is a particularly great colour for the bedroom; it represents nature and health and so can have soothing properties. When choosing art for a bathroom, pieces that depict the natural world like flowers, landscape or water can be a great theme for this location. For a kitchen space, why not display a playful and charming quote about food or cooking!

Art can really add that wow factor to any room. Think about the themes of your home; be they modern, minimalist, traditional or a rustic style. Look for an art piece to suit your current theme. When you choose a piece of art, why not give the rest of the room a little revamp too?!

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Designer Desire: Charles Levier

We’re on the mailing lists of a few national and international auction houses and receive regular alerts about upcoming sales. This week, an email came through from one of them with an image of a lot that immediately caught our eye. It was a painting by Charles Levier (1920-2004).

Levier was Corsican-born, with a French father and American mother. After serving in the French army during the 2nd World War, he divided his time between France and the USA. Examples of his work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the Atlanta Museum, the Seattle Museum and the San Diego Museum amongst others. His works were collected by celebrities such as Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Baron Edmond de Rothschild and Dean Martin.

His style reminds us a bit of Geoffrey Key and Peter Stanaway, but mainly Bernard Buffet.

He seems to have been hugely prolific, and his work is easy to acquire. The price of his original oils vary widely, depending on size and subject matter; they’ve sold for anything from $400 to almost $10,000.

If you’re interested, have a look on eBay, Etsy and 1st Dibs for examples currently for sale.

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We’ve got Bags of Love!

Bags of Love is offering one of our readers one of their personalised triptych canvas artworks. A lovely way to pep up the walls in your bedroom or lounge.

The example on offer measures 90cm x 30cm – each of the three panels is 30cm₂. Upload photos to the Bags of Love from your mobile phone, computer or Facebook or Instagram accounts. You can even chose from their own image library.

I downloaded the lovely photograph above of the Ribblehead Viaduct from the internet to practice making an artwork.

It was just the right ratio for the job – 3 times wider than tall – it created a trio of perfect squares.

I tried again with a photograph of one of Justin’s favourite locations in the country – the Langdale Pikes in the Lake District.

It wasn’t the exact size to slot into three equal squares, however you can resize and crop the image until you’re happy with the composition.

You can also use three separate images – for example, a portrait of your 3 children… or your pets!

To enter, let us know in the comments what subject matter you’d chose to display on your triptych.

Personalised triptych canvas artwork from Bags of Love

Vintage beaten copper plaque

Last week, we published a post about our recent decorating exploits – specifically our top floor bedroom and its shades of grey and black. At that point, there was a large space above the bed waiting for a suitable piece of art. We’d mentioned that there are lots of things relating to nature in the room – and also copper highlights dotted about. Imagine our joy when we found this gorgeous vintage 1960s beaten copper plaque at a local flea market this week.

The first thing we saw peaking out were the feathers. “Oh, that looks interesting!”, we thought…

…and, as we pulled it towards us for a better look, the bird’s head was revealed.

We absolutely love it – the stylised bird, so typical of the era, the materials used, texture, patina and colours. We thought we’d be waiting quite a while to fill that long, narrow space with something suitable – but a few days after taking the initial photos, there it appeared. We very nearly missed the market that day too, but fortunately fate intervened!

H is for Home Harbinger

Tag: artwork