What Makes Great Puzzle Art?
Curating puzzle artwork: a puzzling affair.
The only thing better than a challenging jigsaw puzzle? A challenging jigsaw puzzle that doubles as a gorgeous piece of art.
Puzzles are only as fun as the artwork on their pieces. You want that visual satisfaction of stepping back to look at your finished masterpiece and seeing a mesmerizing, colourful image, don’t you?
That’s why we carefully select contemporary pieces from Canadian artists for our puzzles. Once we license a piece of art, we print and laminate it onto a natural wooden board before laser cutting the puzzle pieces with our custom algorithms.
The result? A perfect coffee table piece that encourages conversation and interaction.
So what makes a good piece of art for a jigsaw puzzle?
The trick is to use artwork with bold, bright colours, high contrast graphics, and not too many super small details. That way, the beauty of the image clearly shines through and isn’t lost in the puzzle piece mayhem.
Take our popular Hope on the Horizon Wood Jigsaw Puzzle based on a painting by Julie Amlin. Its vibrant fairy tale vibe makes for a deceivingly tricky puzzle, thanks to its abstract design and our custom algorithm-created pieces.
More realist art can work amazingly in a puzzle too though, like our Wild Wolf Wood Jigsaw Puzzle. This gorgeous piece (titled "The Guardian") was painted by Mandy Leinbach, a talented local Vancouver Island artist with a passion for wild animals and a degree is in Zoology.
Just imagine that wolf’s face half assembled on your table… So cool.
Both of these puzzles feature bold colours and strong shapes that still look amazing through the lines of the puzzles’ pieces.
But it’s not just paintings that work well for puzzles. Photography has awesome potential too if the image sticks to bold, high contrast colours. For example, check out our Peaceful Paddle Wood Jigsaw Puzzle based off Saman Resapour’s photo of a docked rowboat in the Italian Alps.
Soothing, isn’t it?
Call for art submissions!
Want to turn your art into one of our featured puzzles?
We’re currently seeking contemporary winter and Christmas themed artwork from Canadian artists to feature on our unique wooden puzzles this holiday season. If you’re an artist (or you know of one) interested in having us license a piece of artwork, get in touch.
We're all about creatives supporting creatives, so we've got a couple of different licensing options to choose from for participating artists to get paid.
Check out our current Featured Artists.