Value of giclee prints

On the other hand, concealing that they are copies is against the law although the new art laws in the U.S. are still full of loopholes. You can't give Certificates of Authenticity stating it is an original print but you can say it's a print from the original. In European countries and many others, it's just plainly prosecutable like counterfeit money to try and sell prints that are not, in truth, original prints executed totally by the artist.

Caveat emptor in the U.S.A. and, incidentally, Japan.

Thanks for the warm welcome. Anytime artists can get together, someone comes away with new ideas and a better understanding. So I will answer the questions asked and ask a few for my benefit.

ossobuco
1. I'd guess that the $900 print is about 20sq. ft. from what the printer that I had worked with would charge. If it's much larger she'd probably be getting a good deal.

2. I have gone to Kinko's and had prints done. Made them into postcards, but their printing process somehow lays atop the paper, because as the pieces went through the automatic sorter, high-speed rollers burned off a bit of the piece (this is their reasoning). It doesn't bite.

3. For $20, how large of a piece can your engineering printing company scan, and what is the size of the file?

4. No, I am not going to charge $40. Theoretically I would need to add $40 on top of the cost of the print if the run were 100 pieces to cover my time for production of the original(as though most of us even log our time). I have sold from $80 to $225.

5. "...still a print. Not worth hundreds." Though I agree, but that's because I have my originals around me to appreciate, I have had it told to me, by a friend who was in the giclee printing business early on, that one artist they represented only ran a run of 3 prints and could sell them for $9,000 each. Thats a lot of hundreds.

Vivien
1. Yes I have prints on giclee. The one I spoke of, that people want to touch, to feel the texture; that if you took a 20x loupe and looked at it would see dimension, is giclee. Horribly flat might have been the fault of whoever set up the digital file for printing. It could also be the quality of the canvas and its finish, or the varnish used. Do you know if the printer used the matte or glossy canvas, and what manufacturer they inventory?

2. I'm thinking of smaller sizes as well. My first runs were all oversized. Some time ago I'd read an article about collectors and many of them live in apartments rather than large homes. They like to have many in their collections and hanging, so mostly smaller pieces were evident in the photos. Minies would also have a market in kitchens, motor homes and yachts (not to overlook private jets and Airforce One).

Lightwizard
1. Have you or anyone you've worked with tried the 'printing with the sun' etching process. Once I have my studio completed, I'd like to give that a try.
2. How do you feel about those prints that are coming off the press, in whatever format, as backgrounds, and then the artist comes back and works (rather than just retouches) their technique to finish it? They then sign and number, but I don't recall what type of printing they are calling it.

1. Haven't been exposed (sic) to the "printing with the sun" etching process.

2. A print that is worked on by hand is called a remarque, or in the case of many commercial prints, enchancing. Often the print manufacuters will leave off "enhanced by the artist" which generally means they have hired elves to add paint on each print. In any documentation the artist or publisher must state the original process, for instance like "serigraph or canvas transfer," and then state how many are enhanced which could be the entire edition. A remarque also means the artist has drawn something on the border of the print, often in the pencil used to sign and number.

Quote: 5. "...still a print. Not worth hundreds." Though I agree, but that's because I have my originals around me to appreciate, I have had it told to me, by a friend who was in the giclee printing business early on, that one artist they represented only ran a run of 3 prints and could sell them for $9,000 each. Thats a lot of hundreds.

This is very hard to swallow -- sounds like your friend was trying to make a sales point. The artist could be a big enough name to garner such a price but unless one has that kind of reputation, they're not going to be able to mark up the retail more than 4 times the cost. This is a typical mark-up providing a wholesale and retail level. Art publisher's, as I stated, will order the entire run of editions in numbers more likely around 350 and get a much lower price. Their ideal markup is 8 to 10 times the cost (usually $5.00 each for the artist to sign and number added onto the printing cost).

You may all enjoy that I am being petitioned to represent my art community as one of four who will have framed prints available at places around town, even at the airport. This is trying, since I am honored to be thought important in this way, and I don't say that sardonically, I mean it. The person who is asking is not a schlockpurveyor... (or if she is, my usual antennae aren't working, and my antennae are pretty good) - the opposite, she is interested in promoting our community. I have invited her to participate in a2k to give her view.

I didn't ask her what I would get out of it, as we are clear we don't sell non-original work at the gallery. Some money, and some local repute seems obvious. I also didn't ask if I would have to pay to participate. Yikes.

I heard and listened to Glight on the matter of easy exposure too.

I live on a fine line financially, and understand the pull to have work seen, especially as an older artist.

I am not going to do that, for the mixed reasons of non value for the price asked and my wish not to jump from non-known to too easily known, but I have some understanding of making a different choice, especially if the prints are clearly not original size, and not promoted as other than the photoreproductions that they are.

I guess my breaking point re the promotion is about truth and money. If people know they are buying a well printed poster and it is priced fairly low, I'll squawk less. Then it would just be a question of the risk of overpromotion and making a painting that was, at least for me, an emotional and intellectual passage, a commodity.

I do understand the desire for souvenier pieces as such.

What I am intending to do instead is install my work on an online site I like, once I get the best photos selected.
Not that this will help promote my paintings, but it's a site that makes sense to me as an archiver, also a link that isn't full of zinging arrows, etc.

Check out http://artincontext.org.
I know, it's spare. Part of why I like it. Check out James Moore on it. I like his page, and then the website of more of his work it is linked to.
I don't put this here re his paintings, which I like re spareness for the particular style, reminding me of Morandi, but not Morandi, they're his own... but for his own website, which I am very comfortable with, re the colors and graphics.

Blind, that artist I know had figured she'd have to price her big prints at $900. to make up her time and money spent. She didn't do a big run.

Also, blinded, we routinely run 30 x 42 inch prints at the engineering repro firm, and they have paper that does 36, I think, by however long. (we once did reductions, for a downtown, that were eight feet long.) Their 'macchina', which is what I think of it as, italian for machine, printer plus computer, scans whatever you want at that size or lower, assuming it moves through the rolling apparatus.. that is, on paper. I have no clue if it could do other than paper or if any company would try it. Those are very expensive workhorse photocopiers, important to any of those businesses.

What I had the reprographics company put through for me, those years ago, was a typical original drawing on vellum, let me guess, 24 x 36, and they deigned to print it for me on either rives or arches, which I brought to them. I don't say this is ordinary, but the machines can do it. I was doing it to have a base to work on.

My problem was that I participated with a pal in getting a hundred sheets of the wrong arches for my own interest. There are, or were, different absorbancies.

$750.00 to $900.00 for a giclee or a serigraph is typical for a new edition by a new artist a publisher is promoting. They likely pay no more than $75.00 to $90.00 per sheet.

Thanks for the info, LW.

when i said horribly flat, i didn't mean the canvas itself, which was a true canvas looking texture - but the 'paint' - which of course couldn't show brushmarks in 3D etc - so the marks of the 'painting' were flat and lifeless. It was very very glossy which added to the artificiality of it.

I use giclee a lot for my digital imagery and love it for that.

The coating of ink is extremely thin with giclee due to the stress on detail (the spray is five times smaller than a human hair!). All you will find on a canvas is the texture showing through quite uniformly, not as if it were painted. A "repligraph" actually duplicates the thickness of texture of an impasto painting. It cannot reproduce the subled layers of glazes in, say, a Vermeer.

mmm repligraph sounds marginally better - but as you say, can't replicate the subtleties of glazes - i find the thin cover of the giclee on canvas really repellent, Oil paint used thin is fine but clearly the originals had some variety and texture and all this is lost.


oh - and congratulations Osso -

and please pm me your site if you get one set up

I much prefer the look of giclee on a hot pressed Strathmore paper substrate as it doesn't have that fake look. It just looks like a very good art print. To pass it off as a fine art medium with signed and numbered editions is just plain marketing flim flammery.

Vivien, it was an honor to hear my name repeatedly put forth as one to feature, but I'm not going to do that. Those prints may end up being in the $250. range.

They may say that to everybody. Though, as I said, this woman wasn't the salesy type.

Besides, I don't do all that many paintings of local landscape, I am still in my italy/france/all the world euphoria.

Slightly off topic re giclees but within the discussion about use of printing equipment...

When I was getting some prints re our work, I asked the fellow who is the present master of the macchina if this new printer will take a heavy arches paper. [He's a member of the Empire Squared Group, which I am very enthused about, I like their style. They make art individually and as a group and tend to use found objects to riff off of and not charge much for their work. I am very amused, bought a couple of their playing card series... I missed their last opening, Saturday night, since I am at our own opening. That show title was E2 for President...]

Anyway, he said no, he had tried it. That the machine won't print right because the paper is too heavy to get hot enough to distribute the ink. He said he'd tried Rives 50 and 70, and liked 70, to use as a base for putting watercolor or acrylic over.

So, I don't say that your average big city engineering reprographics firm would put a print or two through for you, but maybe. My old one in LA did. They had students of landscape architecture come in there all the time with small jobs. I think they would process such a request, but that there might be wait, as they, in good years, have giant printing jobs to get out.

Why do it? I didn't think that far years ago when I tried it, in terms of having a few copies of a base drawing to play upon in case of f-up of the first one. I really meant just to play with one landscape plan of mine at a time, and didn't get going on it because the paper I chose sucked up paint.

I am not talking color here.. just ink lines, or in our case, pencil. And - as most of us know, the photo method is not as fine as diazo/blueprint/sepia, etc. could be re line weight, and delicate dots. It sees them or it doesn't, not much in the way of finesse there, at whatever part of the machine's range you choose. You want gnat hairs, you can see them along with the eraser sh/t.

So this is not good for reproducing a fine drawing.. but I was intrigued with it as a tool for a start to riff off of.

it isn't lightfast like a giclee, (although i have stuff I printed several years ago that is still fine), but I use a Hewlett Packard printer, A3 with a flat bed feed as well as the drum feed. It will print beautifully on the heaviest watercolour paper you want to put through it - any thickness up to mount card, i print on hand made paper (with great care), all sorts. Unlike the Epson giclee printers it doesn't need specialist coated watercolour paper.

I just wish Hewlett Packard would make me some lightfast inks.

I often do what you suggest Osso and scan a work mid way, tracing its development. I stick prints of works I've sold into sketchbooks when they go with a particular series of work - I then still have that research information for the future,

I also manipulate and combine elements on the computer and this goes into my sketchbook and feeds into ongoing work. Printing these on decent watercolour paper results in a much much better image.



That was certainly a huge vote of confidence in your work Osso

That or a great sales statement...

Plus, my work, such as it is, is not particularly iconic.

It's not just the factor of lightfast ink. You can coat anything with a UV coating. It's that the proofing inks or inks in color copiers are by-and-large vegetable dyes which are extremely unstable. They may not fade if kept out of bright light (certainly direct sunglight) but the pigment will age and change color. Especially reds which will have a tendency to turn orange and if added to other colors to also change them. The photo printers are using better grades of dyes and that's why the cartridges are more expensive. However, one does wonder how long the photo prints will last. Who cares? You can reprint them from the database.

The tests done on giclee printing using the fine art sets of inks are 60-75 years with minimal exposure to UV on a canvas substrate and slightly less on an acid free paper. This also depends on the grade of gesso used on the canvas. Lots of variables here. A screenprint also has about the same longevity.

One has to depend on the printing studio which is a business. The tests are based on low grade UV exposure as high exposure will fade anything. All giclees are also clear coated with a UV retardant. The tests cannot give any idea on what will happen, for instance, to the red inks in the fine art sets as far as natural chemical change with age.

giclee
Being a giclee publisher , I take exception to the notion of "fading" when he left a Giclee in a south light window for a year and a half. Yuk ! Ya don't leave anything in a window for a year and a half . A giclee printed correctly with the correct materials is the best possible way to reproduce
art in the 21 st. century. Beware of giclees made with garbage materials,on garbage inkjet printers. Should be Wilhelm approved materials.