Choosing Art for Your First Home
First home, bare walls and a tight budget. Which wall to start with, where to spend, what to prioritise and how to build a…
Read article
Ideas for living with art
Guides, essays and references on choosing, hanging and understanding art prints.
Visual Quiet: Giving Art Room to Breathe
In an image, what isn't there counts as much as what is. What negative space is, how it creates calm, and how to use…
Read article
How Cropping and Margins Change an Image
The same image, cropped three ways, tells three stories. How cropping and margins decide what we see and imagine, and how a print feels…
Read article
Human Scale in Architectural Images
Without a person, a drawn building could be three metres tall or three hundred. How architects and illustrators use figures to give us the…
Read article
Shadows as a Compositional Element in Photography
A blind drawing stripes across a wall, a chair's long shadow at dusk. In photography, shadow isn't missing light but form. How to read…
Read article
Faceless Portraits: Identity and Anonymity in Art
A wanderer facing the fog, a woman turned to the window, a featureless figure. Why art sometimes hides the face, and what that leaves…
Read article
The Contemporary Still Life in Painting and Photography
Some fruit, a bottle, a table. The still life looks humble, yet keeps reinventing itself in painting and photography. Its Spanish roots and home…
Read article
Why Repeating Patterns Catch Our Eye
Tiles, textiles, wallpaper, geometric prints: patterns appear in every culture. What we really know about how we see them, and how to use them…
Read article
The Diptych in the History of Images
From Roman ivory tablets to the Wilton Diptych and modern art: two images read as one. What a diptych is, and how to hang…
Read article
The Colour Wheel as a Tool for Looking at Art
Complementary, analogous, triadic. The colour wheel isn't just school theory: it explains why a piece vibrates or soothes, and helps you choose prints.
Read article
Atmospheric Perspective in Printed Images
Distant mountains look bluer, paler and softer. Artists have used that effect for centuries to create depth. What it is and how to spot…
Read article