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On our local free-goods website this past weekend, my fiancee and I found a print, on stretched canvas, of a Gustav Klimt painting. This is better than Craig’s List or even our two favorite thrift stores because, as I noted before, everything is free.
That said, free comes at a price, and in this case the painting, with which we were both familiar, had been cropped severely into the subject matter. Moreover, the gold coloration (Klimt used a lot of gold paint in his patterned images of women) registered as brown because of the porous substrate. It was canvas, but the holdout of the inkjet inks on the primed canvas was mediocre, which dulled down the overall look of what otherwise would have been a striking copy of this Symbolist painting.
Giclee Technology
I have written about giclee printing before. The word means “spurt.” It is high-end inkjet custom printing done with archival inks, archival paper (i.e., acid-free or alkaline paper), and the close attention of the artist (or in this case the close attention of fine arts professionals who had studied Klimt’s work as art rather than as home décor).
Giclee drives up art prices in two ways. The edition of a particular print is sometimes limited. That is, artists may elect to only print a certain number of copies of their original, and this scarcity will increase the monetary value of each copy. The opposite of a “limited edition” is an “open edition,” which can be added to (with more prints) at will by the artist, further diluting their value.
Keep in mind that value comes in two flavors. If you want to make money on art, the more copies that are in existence, the less each copy is worth. If, on the other hand, you love the painting and want to be able to afford a copy, this is a good way to start. In this case the monetary value doesn’t really matter.
In contrast, limited editions or original works of art sold at art galleries and art auctions, such as large paintings even by relatively unknown artists, can run upwards from several thousands of dollars (or much, much more for anything by anyone as famous as Gustav Klimt).
So inkjet commercial printing makes art affordable. This is actually what happened with Alfonse Mucha (and other fine artists, such as Toulouse Lautrec, who made money in the commercial arts as well as the fine arts), especially after the invention in the late 1870s (for printing on tin) or early 1900s (for printing on paper) of offset commercial printing. Regular people could not only see more art but also own it as prints.
With this in mind I thought about other prints I have bought at auction, and I also remembered an early version (from the ‘80s) of an inkjet printer used specifically for proofing custom printing jobs, the Iris. It was an inkjet printer, but due to the technology and the color set, it was not only continuous tone (like a photo print rather than a printed halftone) but also rich in ink coverage and accurate in color reproduction. So it made for an especially good contract commercial printing proof. I never bought one for a job, but I always paid attention to the technology.
Ironically, as noted above, the specific technology was intended to be an interim step in offset custom printing, an especially faithful proof. However, over the years the Iris print has actually became a final art piece to be coveted by collectors.
Old-time Etchings, Engravings, and Other Prints
If we step back in time a bit, artists used to use either sharp instruments to incise metal custom printing plates for fine art line work or establish tones on the printing plate using acids, and resist materials, to either burn away the metal or keep it from being burned away, all to vary the darkness of tones later printed with ink rolled onto the plate.
This meant that in most cases the plate was used to make not a single, original art piece but rather multiple copies. Once burned with acid or cut with an engraving tool, the plate could be printed any number of times on a custom printing press, and the value would rise or fall not only depending on the skill and renown of the artist but also on the scarcity of the limited edition.
In contrast, the kinds of prints that used to be produced via inkjet technology on the Iris proofing device or in modern times on large-format inkjet equipment were in my experience mostly reproductions of paintings and other colorful, flat art.
In my fiancee’s and my case with the Klimt print, we were looking at ways to reproduce colorful paintings, not monochromatic etchings, drypoints, engravings, or mezzotints.
Back to the Present
To come back to present times, our free Gustav Klimt image led us to a couple of solutions. The first involved my fiancee’s touching up areas of the print with metallic paint. (Like metallic printing ink, metallic paint contains small flecks of actual metal: aluminum–or copper and zinc–for silver and brass for gold). This provides a metallic lustre or sheen. My fiancee painted right on the canvas.
She was satisfied with the result but wanted an uncropped image of Klimt’s painting, so we went online to find an art printer.
In my opinion, what makes an art printer more appropriate for this work is that he or she will have the proper inkjet equipment (using pigment-based inks rather than water-based dyes) and archival inks and papers (or canvas). And she or he will have control (as the artist himself or herself would have had) of the overall look of the final giclee (again, not offset custom printing but high-end inkjet, with no halftone dots but instead only minuscule inkjet dots giving a continuous-tone appearance).
The Art Supplier’s Paper Choices
This particular online printer, Fine Art America, offered different sized prints on a number of substrates. I was surprised that canvas was not one of them, although I’m sure their roll-fed printers could accommodate rolls of canvas that might later be stretched over wood stretcher strips. Perhaps for some aesthetic reason Fine Art America offered only paper of various kinds.
When my fiancee and I thought about which paper substrate to use, we looked online but were somewhat confused. We knew that, as with any inkjet or even offset print produced on paper, the substrate (color and texture) would affect the overall look of the print.
In my experience uncoated papers dull back the coloration of inks (of any kind), and gloss-, matte-, or dull-coated papers provide more crisp hues because the ink sits on the surface of the paper rather than seeping into the paper fibers. (I assumed fine art printing and commercial printing would be comparable in these assumptions.)
Fine Art America offered different sizes on different papers. I asked for more detailed descriptions of the paper options and was pleased to receive a list noting specific details of the surface formation and potential appearance of each printed paper stock.
(Remember that the Klimt painting reproductions would have metallics in the inkset. Although we haven’t gotten that far yet with negotiations, it is my understanding that the expanded inksets of professional-grade inkjet printers can include metallic inks–also made, presumably, with flecks of metal in their ink mix.)
In the list of paper options, we looked for such words as “neutral white,” since we didn’t want the hue of the paper to shift the color of the inkjet printed image. Fine Art America included archival matte paper in their offerings, but I was a bit concerned that this would dull down the metallic sheen.
The next three offerings were photo paper (gloss, luster, and photo matte), but my fiancee and I were concerned that this might not give a warm enough feel to the colors and might give somewhat of a metallic sheen to the print (which would not necessarily be bad given the gold in the original).
The next option was a picture “rag” (cotton-, rather than wood-based paper), but we were again concerned that the uncoated nature of the paper would dull down the look of the metallic ink.
The three other options were a watercolor stock, a metallic paper, and a velvet (paper with a bit of texture and yet some smoothness). This cotton rag paper softens the look of the final art, which might make the Klimt image look sensuous and inviting but might also dull down the gold. Watercolor paper we liked for the texture and thickness, but for the metallics we had the same concern about potentially dull ink coloration.
One item noted, however, in Fine Art America’s description of their paper options did catch my interest. Their metallic paper intrigued me. This is how they describe it: “provides an exceptionally vibrant print with the shine and shimmer of metal. This highly durable paper is mostly white with a signature metallic finish, making it ideal for a wide range of images including white and flesh tones” (Fine Art America).
To me, one of the most important characteristics of this paper stock is that it is “mostly white.” So it will not add an unwanted color cast to the final print. This was one concern I had. But it will provide “the shine and shimmer of metal” (Fine Art America). Hence, it might very well provide a realistic appearance of gold in Gustav Klimt’s nudes.
Granted, the best way to make the decision would be to buy one copy (the smallest available copy) of several of the paper options, perhaps including the metallic and the archival matte stock, and make a decision with our own eyes rather than visualizing the results in our mind’s eye.
The Takeaway
This shows just how much of an art form giclee prints have become. The attention to detail, color fidelity, and longevity place this method of reproduction alongside traditional etchings, engraving, screen prints, and art lithographs, as worthy of serious consideration.
And if this interests you, you will see that your own understanding of the principles of traditional offset lithography along with your understanding of various inkjet commercial printing technologies and paper options will be most helpful in your decisions.
But remember to get samples and trust your own eyes rather than just descriptions of paper characteristics. And be mindful of just how the color and texture of the paper substrate will alter the appearance of the final art.
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on Sunday, August 13th, 2023 at 7:52 pm and is filed under Fine Art Printing.
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