Left to right, top to bottom - art by Mesmyths, Gunpowderblush, kf2-art-things, SagiYuki, Abbadon, and Sugarpucks
My apartment has a whole bunch of art plastered (Note if you are my landlord: not literally plastered) on the walls. A few are bought from stores online, but the vast majority are of my very own characters. And I gotta tell ya, it's pretty terrific.
I've visited a few apartments now of friends that have barren walls, only filled with the standard off-white apartment paint job. And - at least for me - it just kinda feels bad to exist in that sort of space. It's too sterile.
At the same time, I don't have a ton of attachments to popular media, and the ones I do, I'm not jumping at the oppritunity to put them up on my wall. I tend to like more understated pop culture merch, I guess?
But my own characters - that's fun! I can't speak for everyone, but my ocs are deeply personal, and having a space filled with them just makes it feel all the more special. This isn't the apartment of someone who enjoys X Y Z shows, this is the apartment of the guy who made up a weird blue cyclops with two mouths.
So! This'll be quick but, I wanted to give some insight on how you could do this yourself, if you're so inclined!
The Art
Generally, if you commission someone to draw something, they tend to give you the rights to do whatever with it, provided it's noncommercial in nature. Even still, I always make sure to ask artists if they're ok with me printing out their work, just in case. It's also fun to get to send them a photo of the finished thing printed out! It's cool to see someone appreciate your work so much they'd stick it up on their wall, so make sure to let them know if you end up doing it.
Of course, you can also draw it yourself. If you do, make sure to use a high resolution so you don't see the pixels when you print it out. I know... very little about printing, truthfully (take everything I say here with a grain of salt) but something like 300 DPI is probably fine.
That said, I've printed out tons of art that's lower res and it looks fine. This is decor for your apartment, I realistically never look at any of this stuff closer than a foot away anyways. Whatever works for you is fine.
Printing
Once you've selected your images, there's plenty of places to print.
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Check online to see if there are any print shops local to your area. Always nice to support local businesses, and doing stuff like this in real life is always prefferable (to me at least) to ordering online.
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Failing that, office stores like Staples tend to have a printing section that can do it for you.
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If you're a student, check if your campus has any plotter printers available. My old university had one meant for architecture students, but anyone could print to it, and I was able to run off a bunch of wall art that way. This can be really cheap, depending on your schools printer policy.
- Bear in mind you'll need to cut the image out yourself if you do it this way. A mat cutter or similar tool will help keep your cuts straight.
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And, if there's absolutely no way to print irl, plenty of online services will do it for you. There's too many to list offhand, though you obviously need to pay for shipping now.
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If you've got an inkjet printer kicking around, no harm in trying that. I'd caution against regular printer paper though, you want something with a bit more weight to it, designed for photos or prints specifically. You can even escape the size limits of a home printer if you're willing to tape together a bunch of pieces - visual quality will obviously suffer but, it's an option.
Hanging
I add this section specifically as a renter. Landlords don't want you damaging the walls and all.
In my opinion, the absolute best way to hang a poster is a frame. Gives it way more class, and you can hang it off a command strip hook since it's more rigid. But, that can add up in terms of cost quickly, poster frames are surprisingly expensive.
The route I tend to go is good ol' blue painters tape. I take a small length and make a loop, stick them in the corners (and edges, if the poster is big enough), and stick it to the wall. I've never had blue painters tape take paint off the wall removing it, and it can even come off the paper itself without ripping it. It's cheap, available at any hardware store, and what I go to for almost all my posters.
It's not perfect - now and then I need to apply pressure to sagging corners, and you'll want to test beforehand just in case your specific brand is way stronger and inclined on taking some paint with it as a souvenier. But, generally speaking it's worked out for me.
This was a small, kinda silly post, but I wanted to maybe kickstart some peoples brains thinking about this kind of thing. The fact it's so easy to make high-quality prints of literally any image you want nowadays is kind of wild when you think about it.
So go out there, fill your homes with personalized art!