Innovative Graphical Images and Art Projects Using your Trusty Office Printer

Author: Editorial Staff \ March 20, 2013 \ Articles \ 2 Comments

It’s probably safe to assume you have a printer whether it be at home or in your office. Advances in personal printers have made them affordable to almost everyone and even the very cheapest options can produce high quality images.

More often than not the printer is used to print out documents. Occasionally they may be used to create a birthday invitation or ‘Have you seen this dog?’ posters for a wayward pet.

But many end users don’t realize the creative potential hiding in the printer sitting innocently on their desks. With a little imagination and some freely available tools, you can turn your printer into a creative powerhouse!

Refills for printer ink and cartridges are readily available and you can also get some extraordinary results by using textured or colored paper. Your local stationery shop is sure to have a mind bending array of different colored papers to form part of your next masterpiece.

Last year a Malaysian based artist was invited to create an artwork using just a single ink cartridge to create the piece. Her name is Hong Yi(Red) and she created a 14m x 6m bird image using 1500 pieces of A4 paper, the aforementioned single ink cartridge and a handful of commonly available stationery items to hold it all together. You can view her amazing portfolio here

If your creative vision doesn’t involve such a grand end result, you could consider something a little smaller and easier to put together. The website at http://rasterbator.net/ houses a very simple interface that allows you to upload an image of your choice which it then transforms into a large dot matrix style picture that can be as large as the side of your house or small enough to fill a more traditional size gap on your wall.

It’s easy to use and with a bit of trial and error you can generate some amazing images. The only thing limiting the size of your creation is the number of pages you want to print and how much ink to use. With refills for printer ink and cartridges readily available you could hypothetically fill your entire home with these fun artworks. Some samples can be seen below.

Apart from creating images that would be at home on the wall of an art gallery, you can also entertain the little people in your life with another creative use for your printer: paper craft.

A popular paper craft is www.Cubeecraft.com. They are designed to fit on one sheet of A4 paper which you print out, fold and assemble into toys. There are a handful of active cubeecraft websites which feature free downloads of these fun projects.