Any artist who has ever sold their original work knows that once your pride and joy are gone, it’s over. Imagine if you could make copies of some of your most important pieces and sell them as high-quality art prints on demand, often using the same media that the original.
You now have endless opportunities to increase your revenue. Another way to market your artwork is through giclee fine art prints.
Print on demand
Digital printing has a number of advantages for the publisher and artist. The edition can be printed as soon as the print orders are received.
Giclee images are digital files that can be created from original paintings, watercolours, or drawings.
You can keep an archived copy of the image file so that you can call off any number of copies. This allows you to avoid printing a full print edition at a high cost.
High quality archive printing
Artists have traditionally used offset lithography or screen-printing for the reproduction of prints. Both of these photomechanical methods use plates and screens.
Giclee Printing is a method of printing that uses a digital image from a computer to print on large-format inkjet printers. The French word for “spray”, Jack Duganne, was the first to coin the term “giclee”. It is an inkjet-based digital printing that is used as fine art.
It must be printed on UV-resistant pigmented archival inks and made from archival quality coated papers to qualify for the title “fine art giclee” print. To minimize discolouration, the Fine Art Trade Guild has established minimum standards for a Giclee Print. It must score 6 on the Blue Wool Scale to ensure light fastness. The acidity level should be between pH7-9.
It is important to ensure that the canvas or paper used in a Giclee print is of high quality. Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper Mills, which have been producing mould-made artist papers for more than 435 years, has a wide range of fine art papers that can be used in giclee print. You will get a stunning giclee print that is often made on the same media as your original artwork.
A typical giclee printer will use twelve colours of pigment based ink to achieve high quality colour reproduction. These include red, blue and green as well as photo cyan, magenta and photo magenta. Yellow, regular black, matte black, and yellow.
A giclee printed using pigment inks can last up to 100+ year. However, this is dependent on the paper type and storage conditions. A giclee printed with pigment-based archival inks has a significantly better archival property than traditional silkscreen and litho prints.
Scanning and Digitising Artwork
First, digitize your original artwork or painting. The scan captures every detail and colour of the original in high-quality quality.
A good colour management system in the form ICC profiles (international color consortium) profiles of scanner, computer screen, and printer will ensure that the final print is as accurate as possible for colour and density.
Once you have the digital scan, you can order copies on demand.
You don’t have to print large quantities of offset litho prints or pay high printing costs. Instead, you can cut costs by printing only what you sell. There are no unsold prints that you can store and you have the option of printing your work on different types of paper and in different sizes.
Print Quality
What kind of issues can an artist expect to encounter when creating a giclee from original artwork? The scan quality and the media you choose to print on are the only issues that should be considered. The most important aspect of the entire process is getting the scan right. There is an old saying in scanning that says “Rubbery in, Rubber Out” – meaning you will not be satisfied with the final results if you start with poor scans.