How to make your own “scale” images for artwork

Image Editing

I think that it is important to come up with as many ways to help your prospective clients visualise owning your work, my theory is that this will help them to buy it!  One way is to show them the size because not everyone can visualise size from a set of measurements, in fact hardly anyone can.
It is relatively simple to add images of your artworks to your web site which will show your viewers what size your paintings are.
There are several gallery web sites that do this, not enough in my opinion, and some of them get the scale wrong…which is a waste of time.

Here is how I do it:
First, I find or make an image, a person or a chair are good starting points. Most people understand what average sizes those objects are!  My average person is me: 5 foot 6 inches or roughly 170 centimetres.  The average chair is 3-foot-high or 90 cm and the seat part is 1 foot 6 inches, or 45 centimetres. From now on I am working in centimetres.

I make a blank page on my computer in a drawing programme, 20 x 15 cm making sure that it is 200 dpi.
Then I make a scale guide 17 x 5 cm (all I do is move the decimal point) at 200 dpi and cut and paste this onto my first page.  This is my person height, I can then scale up or down my person image to fit.  If everything is the same dpi it will work.
Once I have made my scale image I begin resizing my painting images, so , for example, a painting measuring 80 wide by 60 high I will resize (move the decimal point)  to 8 x 6 cm at 200 dpi, then cut and paste into my scale image. Another measuring 13 cm wide by 18 cm high I will resize to 1.3 cm by 1.8 cm at 200 dpi, then cut and paste.

The resulting image can be saved as, “painting name with frame” and saved as a jpg in a folder on your desktop.  You can then happily add images to your website.
I use Artlook to make my website and it is super easy to add to my  “Artlook items” as additional images which then appear on my web site and help everyone understand what size my paintings are.
The basic rules are: stick with the same dpi throughout, move the decimal point, or divide by 10 on everything.
Please feel free to use these sample images of people that I have shown here, just click and save the image.
Have fun showing images of your lovely work…to scale.
Sarah

About Sarah

Sarah Wimperis is a professional artist and illustrator and also works for Artlook in Client Support and as our Artist Ambassador. Sarah's Artlook website is here.