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Until the invention of digital art, an art print
has been a reproduction of an painting or drawing, usually done
by
an
offset
printing
process, lithography, or other traditional printing method. With
the advent of computer generated artwork and the ink jet printing
process, new terms are needed. As with any evolving terminology,
the same terms are often used in different ways by different
people. I will endeavor to explain here how I use the terms in
relationship to my artwork.
The
most well known type of fine art print is the Iris print, also
sometimes called the Giclee print. The
Iris printing process was one of the first, high quality ink
jet processes developed and has been widely used to create digital
prints intended for use as fine art. The term "giclee"
comes from the French word "gicleur," meaning "nozzle."
"Gicler" is the French verb meaning "to spray." Since
all ink jet printers, including Iris printers, spray the inks onto
the paper via nozzles, sometimes the term Giclee is
used to mean any ink jet print. It is a confusing and often debated
issue, and I find no reason to expand on that debate here.
I find it easier to refer to Iris prints as
just that, Iris, and prints made on other ink jet printers by
manufacturers other than Iris, as fine art prints. There are
many printers, by a number of manufacturers, now on the market
which produce extremely high quality, stunning prints on a variety
of surfaces (from canvas to photo papers) with a variety of inks,
both pigmented and dye based. These are what I would call fine
art prints, those created as high quality ink jet prints, directly
from a digital file, and for fine art, rather than commercial
use.
For a digital artist like myself, the prints
I create myself are original prints, not reproductions.
They are the final process of putting ink to paper in the experience
of creating the artwork. I create my images on a computer with
a variety of 2 and 3 dimensional imaging programs, then print
them myself using one of the newer, high quality ink jet technologies.
I take a great deal of time and effort with each print to get
on paper the exact colors, contrast, lightness and darkness,
etc. of the image I created on the screen. These are original
prints.
When another printmaker licenses my work and
creates and sells prints of it these images I considered reproductions.
They are still high quality prints, but every different printer,
paper and ink will produce slight changes in color, contrast,
etc. There is no way to guarantee they will match exactly with
the original I created. That is not to say they are not beautiful
prints (they are! please don't hesitate to purchase them), just
that only when I print the image myself are you getting an
original print.
New World Creations' is undergoing many changes
at the moment and is not offering original archival giclees except
for those prints still available in the Archival Giclee
Clean Out Sale found at: http://www.nwcreations.com/specialgicleesale.htm.
New Archival Giclee may be offered in the future
as limited editions or special orders. Announcements will be
sent out to the NWC mailing list when these prints become available.
Zazzle offers
both archival and non archival prints in a variety of sizes and
papers. Click on the "Click to Order" link on any product
page to order these prints.
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