The Making of Gallery Wraps
Gallery wraps are just one option for displaying canvas prints. You print the piece, stretch it, add a wire on the back and then display it on your wall. The real unique thing here is that instead of a frame, the wrap section is also printed to give a 3-dimensional feel to the art.
In today's post, we are going to review the different options for the sides of a gallery wrap.
Option 1: Image Reversal
This is the most common technique. You select a portion of the image equivalent to the size of the wrap portion and mirror it on all four sides. Mirroring it means the colors on the edge line up, but it can look awkward if the mirrored section has a portion of a hand. We typically remove nonsensical mirrored object from the wrap section to prevent this. The example below also has a solid color fade on the wrap section, but the fade is not required.
Option 2: Blur
Blur is an alternative to mirroring. The mirroring process is still done, but instead of leaving the image sharp a blur is applied to give the wrap the same colors and feel but without any possibly distracting details.
Option 3: Solid Color
This method is very simple. The wrap section simply get printed with a solid color that matches the piece. Often this solid color is a color picked directly from the image itself.
Option 4: Image Continuation
This final method is easily the most involved and also one of my favorites. Instead of mirroring the image onto the wrap, the image gets an extension filled or painted on. This works really well when the image ends in the middle or an art or a noticeable object. In the example below, continuing the lantern on the edge make it look less awkward then having the lantern tilted one way and then immediately the other as would occur in a mirror.
The wrap portion of a gallery wrap can really contain whatever you like. We have had one where the wrap was fragments of entirely different pieces of that artist's artwork! The above methods are just some of the ones we use most often.
