Value of giclee prints

Osso - screenprinting as done at my college and the printworkshop that I belong to (fantastic artists resource, with Rochat presses. Belvoir press. Litho press and screen printing facilities) -

the screen printing is done on a large table with air vents that suck the paper and hold it down flat while you work, a hinged mesh screen is brought down over the paper with parts masked off, either with stopout for editions or just temporary paper shapes for for one-offs and a custardy textured ink is squidged across the mesh with a rubber squidgee - pressing the ink through where there is no mask/stop out.

This is repeated as necessary with different stop outs, remembering how overlaid colours will affect each other.

The technician at college used to do amazingly complicated technically prints with 30+ layers of colour and almost photo realist results.

Kevin Holdaway:


he's English, though these images are all of America

link to more images if you are interested

I love monoprinting and it does have a special quality when done through a press - i have seen articles on convering old washing mangles into printing presses.

Farmer etching and aquatint is lovely isn't it? aquatint has a lovely quality to it, velvety and rich

Exquisite screenprinting, Vivien -- the edge of the righthand building meeting the edge of the Empire State is disconcerting and I'm puzzled by that compositional effect.

Monotypes are bonefied originals and museum curator standards are that if no more than nine prints are pulled, it's consider original. If the monotype was lifted off of glass and the artist makes more of them, of course each one will be different. An artist can do a suite of prints pulled off of glass or other substrate and add to each image as a theme and variations.

I see where the artist is limiting the serigraphs to 12 and 3 artist proofs, not the 300 and more that is the standard in the commercial print industry.

Aquatint my be my favorite graphic medium. It has a watercolor appearance achieved by adding various materials to the face of a plate, such as fine sand in an epoxy.

wiz, when I do aquatints , I use a lot of masks and lacquer paints to spray the plate. sometimes I did multiple registry so I could use colors .

Has anyone evr done mezzotints? Im not trained in that and Ive read about it but the technique hasnt sunk in.

Today after doing some fishing , we polled in near Macgias port for some chowder/there was an artist who had some woodcuts and lino cuts of Maine animals in a studied primitive style. They were really good. We bought a print of a Maine Coon Cat for the wall of our RV.
vivien, I am bothered by the proximity of the two buildings also. They just touch and its disturbing

Mezzotint being a multiple plate process for color is very difficult. The black-and-white is achieved by delicate wiping of the plates to achieve different levels of ink therefore giving one different shades of gray to black. As difficult or more difficult than hand produced lithography limestone plates. At least they won't break! Robert Rauschenburg produced a print where the limestone plate cracked through the center. He liked the image and continued to pull the entire set of prints.

Link: http://www.artsmia.org/prints_processes/litho/l_rauschenberg.html

I haven't ever done any mezzotint

(mĕt´setĬnt, mĕd´ze-, mĕz´e-) [Ital.,=halftint], method of copper or steel engraving in tone. A Dutch officer, Ludwig von Siegen, is given credit for the invention of mezzotint c.1640. The process then came into prominence in England early in the 18th cent. Mezzotint involves uniform burring with a curved, sawtoothed tool by cradling it back and forth until the surface of the plate presents an all-over, even grain. This yields a soft effect in the print. The picture is developed in chiaroscuro with a scraper and a burnisher, every degree of light and shade from black to white being attainable. In pure mezzotint, no line drawing is employed, the result being soft without the sharp lines of an etching. Mezzotint was often used for the reproduction of paintings, particularly, in England, for landscapes and portraits. The process is essentially extinct today.

When I use aquatint the plate is put in a cupboard of some lethal aquatinting powder (at the Print Workshop, and you have to wear a mask and have an extractor fan) - you put your metal plate on a shelf, close the cupboard and turn some paddles that stir up all the dust, you leave it for 10 mins or more and then take it out and melt the covering over a bunsen burner (on a metal grid) - just melt, no more, when it dries you then mask it out (whites), put in acid bath, mask out next lightest - acid - mask out next tone - acid etc etc etc until you have all your tonal values sorted.

Any etched lines are done before the aquatinting process.

Kevin's a one-off with compositions and skills. His work sells very well in America.

Screenprinting is something I didn't enjoy so much - i think it is the lack of texture, the flatness of it,

the info on the editions of 9 was interesting.

Im so into futzing that my own aquatint methods involved first cutting and acid etching a plate with an asphaltum coat. Then Id spray laquer onto areas I want to develop shades and Id mask what I previously etched. Then Id etch again in an Iron chloride solution so there werent any big buubles on the etch.

Itseemed that mezzotint has the plate first be a solid black by some pattern cutting then the white is cut in by the tool that you spoke of. I was again thinking, why not use an air brush and spray on a lacquer and then etch to get a solid black plate , then cut in the white areas.
It seems ass backwards but some mezzotints Ive seen have a much more subtle shsading . The popee process was mentione in a class I had years ago, Ive lost those notes and I dont think Ive spelled it correctly.

wiz, I once had a plate (Solnhofen Limestone) in my art classes, (remember I was already a professional geologist ) The plate was busted and I asked to buy it. I took it and did my litho grease drawing and etching. Then I took the plate to the rock cracker in the geo preparation lab and busted the bejezuuz out6 of the stone. Then I carefully glued the stone back together with a dimensional epoxy so the cracks wouldnt be lost. Then I took an engraving tool and engraved a line in latin on thhe stone . When I printed it, the cracks and engraving showed up as an embossing . It was different and not too great but it was mine.

your aquatint method sounds interesting

do you ever do collagraphs? I love them - you only get a few prints before the plate is flattened but they have a lovely quality. I don't stick much on, but peel layers away for tone, usually i only stick fine threads on or similar as i hate the crudity of collagraphs with lentils and lace and stuff stuck on! For anyone that doesn't use them here is one description (not quite as I use it as he relies more on sticking stuff on, rather than cutting away)

I use mount card as the plate

A Collagraph is an original hand made print pulled from a plate that was constructed by gluing textured materials to a hard board surface. The materials create various lines, textures and tones when hand inked and hand wiped. The plate is inked by forcing the ink into the textured recesses in the plate and hand wiping the raised areas. The print is made by passing the inked plate and rag paper through an etching press. Pressure from the press forces the rag paper into the recessed areas of the plate and when the paper is removed the ink is transferred to the paper. Each Collagraph is an original print because it is totally hand made by the artist.

vivien, yeh Ive done collographs( and chine colle'). I remember 1 collograph where I was gathering tin can lids and i used them as items on the masonite plates. I had a series of multiple plate registries and they came out quite interesting on really wet papers ( I usually use Rieves paper as i recall) It had a cream color and I could get a real stark white in the mix by inking with white inks and white India ink . This showed up as a nice bleach wwhite that looked like sunlight on a wall

I like the experimental way you work, yes chine colle' is great. Have you got pictures of any you can post?

yeh, when we get back from Maine Ill try. ill have to scan the prints . I still havent een able to post my own pictures 9photos)

ooops i gave you the wrong info on Kevin's print that I posted - he emailed me - below is the correct info

....... I got the impression that the image was being
portrayed as a screen print which I am afraid to say is not.

Nearly all of my imagery is of a relief printing nature and mostly that using reduction lino. I noticed also that comments were made about the edition size. The reason for the small editions are mostly to do with logistics. When an image contains more than 30 layers of colours and you have an edition of 20 then that means the lino used has to be put under pressure 600 times. The lino will eventually become unstable and wear down, apart from the fact that everytime you clean with chemical you affect the surface also.

So if it was you with the kind words about my work which I thank you, please could you refer to the imagery as relief prints as I no longer do screenprinting.

Plus also the images can take up to five months from start to completion.

If anyone would like to talk to me or need information about printmaking then I am more than willing to respond. Hope all goes well with the LPW Take care Kindest regards

Kevin Holdaway

What a nice note. Hmm, lino prints, isn't that more like etching, and very hands on?

not so much like etching unless you do intaglio lino prints, which these aren't.

To do cutaway lino's like this you first cut away your white parts and print your palest colour - the whole edition - then cut again for the next lightest and so on, until at the end you only have a little bit of lino still standing up, which is your darkest darks.

the cut away parts are not inked, only the raised surface, using a roller.

Each overprinting has to be perfectly registered with the previous layers - so you can imagine the technical skills and organisation involved with the number of layers he uses

with intaglio lino you ink up the cut away parts with a variety of colours using a brush and then roll a colour over the raised parts. Then you print it using a layer of foam as well as the traditional felt blankets in the press - then the whole lino plate prints ,

I encouraged Kevin to join A2K and he said he might - if he does you'll get a better explanation!

I only very occasionally use lino for printing as i prefer collagraphs and etching/aquatint/drypoint.

Thanks a lot, Vivien, that was helpful.

Hi all,
Came upon this thread of discussion while doing a search for glicee canvas.

As much as I would like to see the value of my work appreciated (pun intended), I too view the printing process as a means of getting my work on the walls of many, even college students. Personally, I don't look upon prints as an investible item; a promotional item yes.

Last year I had some prints made in glicee. As mentioned in an earlier post, it is a process that the artist may have no part in. With mine, I had a lot of proofing time. In fact, I camped out in the printer's shop for three very long days as we were trying to bring ONE piece into correct expressionary focus.

After paying for the prints, researching the printer and media costs, I am equivocal about the 'overpriced' nature of the process. On the one hand, if you are sending off a file and receiving prints in return, and your work space has many square inches of similar hue, you are paying a handsome price. On the other hand, if you are presenting a file, discussing proofs and your piece has intense hue variation, there are a lot of hours being put in by the person setting up your print.

If you are drawing or painting, printing is a means of ancillary income. Does glicee REPRESENT your work if you want to use it for this? My experience is a resounding yes. One piece that was printed has folks asking if they can touch it, wanting to feel the texture. This is a flat surface print that promotes dimensionality to the naked eye, and yes to a loupe in the eye as well. I don't retouch. As another example of whether it represents the work well, my son gave a print to his friends for their wedding gift. They have repainted their living room to accommodate the print. If this were a mediocre representational process, I doubt that that would have taken place. As we know, it is most often the opposite circumstance.

Pricing the print, after one pays up to or exceeding a couple of hundred dollars to have one print made, becomes another issue. The printer I worked with suggested doubling the print cost for the market value. I instead looked at an estimate of how much time I had in the piece, an estimate of how many pieces of that print I might sell, and then worked out a profit margin. As an example, if I have 40 hours in a piece, and I'd like to think that my time is worth $100 an hour, that's $4,000 that I need to capture in margin. If I think 100 pieces will sell, that's $40 margin over cost of the print. If more are sold, all the better.

My son has suggested that I increase the margin by 8% or so each year as though they were my investments appreciating. By the way, I still have the originals to pass on or use in my retirement years. Yes, those latter years when collectors will start dropping your name, along with the reference to what's left of your natural timeline.

Hi and welcome to a2k, blinded! Look around at the art forum and the rest of the place, I hope you join us for other questions than this one.

One of the artists who show with us has recently done some giclees - eek, the opening is Saturday. She says she'd have to charge $900. a print, for the big ones, to make her money and time back, on the basis of her data so far. Her work sells, if not like firecrackers, fairly well in the originals at $3000. - 6000.

We won't sell prints here, but we don't, in contrast to some galleries, control the folk that show with us to an inch of their artistic lives. Even if we could we can't, if you follow that. We can't offer them buyers on a slab that would make their being totally exclusive with us a commanding idea, though we try, and we do have agreement that they won't show elsewhere locally, except at the museum or the university galleries.

We understand the urge to do prints, which is why I started this thread. And yet.. I still wonder, why not go to Kinko's and do posters on good paper? I know, color.... but giclee is still a mechanical print, bappo.

Not that I know if Kinko's would do posters on good paper..
but years ago I got interested in playing with putting a landscape design (I do landscape architecture for a living) via xerox onto Rives or Arches paper and then painting it on purpose in the blotchy way that the back of fast marker renderings on blueprint paper came out. And one of the big blueprint/xerox companies was glad to print on Rives for me... instead of the usual vellum or bond. Well, they knew me and could fit it in their business day.

Still, in terms of getting work seen, the cost of that kind of printing seems more appropriate for the client. (My present engineering printing company charges $20.00 to scan something.)

You are going to charge $40. ??
I might not have a problem with that, given the buyer has a
piece of paper saying what the print is. $400, I do, right this minute anyway.

I can see your point that the color fooling around makes it worth more, but... eh! still a print. Not worth hundreds.

blinded - have you ever actually used the giclee canvas? I really don't like it. A print on paper is an honest reproduction whereas the prints on 'canvas' are horribly flat and shiny and soooo fake looking.

I tried it myself when it came out but really hated it and i see it in lots of seaside tourist-targeted galleries and i think the 'canvasses' look terrible.

The papers for giclee can be really nice, heavyweight watercolour type papers.

I'm still deciding whether to sell mini giclee prints of my work, i don't intend to sell actual size ones. They would then be quite cheap.

I can see the use of the mini size, they make more sense to me, plus they are clearly not the original.

Again, the giclees on a good grade of canvas have been tested out to be the most durable. These processes are all reproduction processes. It's basically an expensive photo-offset print. Silkscreening is highly mechanized with the new technology and is just a sophisticated poster print process. Lithography from a stone or metal plate is the third commercially used method of printing and some of these are original images (images that haven't been painted in another medium and then just copies). Many are done, however, with computer spray process where the resist is sprayed on by a process similar to giclee. The printer merely makes separate scans for each color from an original, usually a pastel or watercolor, and then creates plates with this process. So far, there aren't commercial art manufacturers that will produce aquatints, woodblocks or etchings but it is possible to do these with the same technologies available for serigraphs, giclees, Repligraphs and lithographs.

One has to look for prints that are absolutely represented as hand made plates and hand pulled by the artist (even if they have printing technicians to assist in the studio as Jasper Johns has divulged). It all boils down to whether or not the printmaker is almost totally involved with the process. Sitting around waiting for proofs off of a machine is minimal involvement in a reproduction process. Giclee printers realized early on they weren't making enough money of these small number of print orders and encourage doing the entire edition with good price breaks. This means it has become about the same price as serigraphy and serigraphy still looks classier than giclee printing. I admit companies like Harvest in Orange County have produced some really fine looking reproduction prints but one still has to market them for what they definitely are not -- signed and number original prints. Say the word "reproduction" and try and get $900.00.