Size of Image - Help

[AutumnRain]

I would like to paint a world map (our world) onto 22x28 canvas...but I'm not the best at determining what size an image should be. I tend to make the final image too small or too large. Any tips for getting an appropriate size?

I've been an lazy artist and just painted directing onto canvases while just eye-balling a reference. I should probably stop that as I'm not getting the results I want.

[Mouse]

Hello Autumn Rain

Are you talking about a real canvas and real paint, or are these PS/GIMP terms for digital 'paintings'?

[waldronate]

I would say that you should do a quick sketch on a separate piece of paper and then scale that image to your final size. That way you can focus on composition first and worry about fitting the image to your surface as a separate activity.

As someone with absolutely no artistic ability, I have historically relied on the use of a slide projector (or an overhead projector when I could borrow one) to put my image where I wanted it and then traced over that. More recently, I used a little USB LED projector to project signage onto the surface where I needed it so that I could paint the outlines (the USB projector is dim and the wall is outside, so I had to work at night; cheap projectors also have horrible resolution [320x240 in this case]). For a small surface like you have, a pantograph can be purchased cheaply or made out of a few sticks. In this fancy modern era, you could probably take a picture of your sketch and then have it printed at the desired final size without too much expense.

[johnvanvliet]

(our world) onto 22x28 canvas..

22 x 28 WHAT ?

pixels ?
millimeters ?
Centimeters?
Meters ?
inches ?
feet?

and is this on paper/canvas or digital ?

if digital are you printing it ?

[AutumnRain]

Sorry, I should have specified. 22x28 inch canvas for acrylics. I'm wanting to draw a world map onto it and then paint different texture on it, but I'm really struggling to the world to look correct. Greenland looks huge! I think I have the proportions wrong. I tried to collage images in Photoshop cs, but even then it looks...off. I'm guessing that the world doesn't fit on a flat surface without being warped in some way?

Thanks for the suggestion waldronate.

[waldronate]

http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapPr...C/cartTOC.html may be of interest.

[Mouse]

Hey Autumn Rain

Choose your global projection and take the proportions of your canvas from that. Eg, if you choose an equilateral projection which is twice as wide as it is tall, then the canvas will need to be twice as wide as it is tall.

Decide what the smallest feature will be, in terms of how much detail you intend to put on your map, and match the size of the smallest detail with the smallest mark you can comfortably make with the smallest brush you own, then calculate the overall size of the canvas by measuring the smallest feature/brush mark, and working out how many times this tiny mark would fit in the shortest side of the canvas.

That's how I would do it anyway, if I had to make a painting with a certain precise amount of detail in it

Then prepare a digital file with the correct projection of your world down to a local printer and ask them to print it on the canvas for you as a permanent easy to use set of guidelines. Of course, at this stage you might easily decide just to print it and frame it, but printed canvas fades over time, so there is actually a point in painting over the top of the printed image.

If you intend to frame the painting, then remember to add the width of the overlapped section that disappears into the frame, to the overall dimensions of the canvas in both directions, and to ask the printer to place the print of your world dead in the centre of the canvas - leaving the overlap edge blank. He should get what you mean if you describe what you're trying to do. Printers are generally intelligent beings. They have to be, to understand some of the nuttier things that I for one have asked them to do in the past


EDIT: Alternatively....

Get the digital image of the world and work on it with an appropriate paint program on your computer to make it look more 'painterly', then ask a printer to print it on ordinary high quality matte paper and get it framed like any other print (behind glass to protect it from fading). That in the long run would be much cheaper, and possibly a whole lot easier to do.

[Poison]

Fun idea! Mapping a sphere (the earth) onto a flat surface will always lead to some distortion. The different ways of mapping it are called projections, and I think you should look up different projections and pick what you like best. XKCD, as always, has a relevant comic:



To suggest yet another way of getting the digital image onto the canvas: using a grid is a good, low-tech way to copy/enlarge an image. Draw a grid of 15*20 squares on your source image, and draw a 15*20 grid on the canvas as well*. Copy the contents of square 1A into the other square A1, A2 to A2 and so on.

(*of course the actual number of squares in the grid depends on the proportions of the image and on how much guidance you think you need. Smaller squares = more precision)

Here's an example, though a much simpler one:

[AutumnRain]

Thank you, everyone! I feel more prepared to conquer this map now.