Digital or Giclee Printing

The process:

  • Techniques
  • Images
  • Further reading

    • Although some artists have been fascinated by computer generated imagery for years the advent of inkjet or giclee printing is fairly recent. Only since the mid-nineties have machines been available to work at the quality required and at a reasonable price. In fact it is really only in the last four to five years that the manufacturers of the machines have developed the potential by finally supplying inks that have sufficient light fast properties to satisfy the stringent demands of artists, collectors and publishers. At the same time paper manufacturers have been developing specially coated papers which work in conjunction with the inks to provide brilliant colour rendering and long lasting stability.

    Companies such as Epson have produced large format inkjet printers developed originally out of proofing printers but now using pigmented inks instead of the more normal dyes. I use an Epson 7500 which they claim when printed on the appropriate media produces prints with a light fastness of 200 years. More or less everything can be adjusted and controlled by the artist printer including print pattern, speed of printing, drying time and precision placement on the paper or board.

    Epson 7500 inkjet printer in workshop

    The advent of these printers is a real revolution for printmakers and galleries. At last editions can be made without large investment in stock, allowing eventually for more adventurous images to be tried out and printed on demand. Linked to a powerful PC or Mac the print quality is remarkable, although there is plenty of potential for skill in their use.

    My techniques, like many others, are steadily evolving; constantly probing and trying out new programs, combinations of filters and applications. Although I use standard programs like Photoshop CS2 and Paint Shop Pro as well as Painter 9, I also use 3-D programs and many others from which one or two filters prove particularly useful. On the whole I try to avoid that overwrought and polished Photoshop look so popular in the magazines on the subject. Image files are often anything from 5Mb to 60Mb with very high resolutions, and printed at settings of at least 720dpi, and often 1440 dpi. The images seen on this web site are low resolution files at 72 pixels and can only hint at the final print quality.

    Images are sourced by scanning photographs, direct digital photography input, scanning paint textures, drawings, and creating directly in Painter 9 and 3-D programs where necessary. Perhaps my 25 year background in screenprinting a helps with handling multiple layers with ease, and certainly my approach is very much that of a printmaker. I look for certain qualities in the image and the final printed version that make them unique; unable to be created in any other way. It is now possible to create images that were simply beyond the capabilities of screen process printing. It is early days but the ceiling has vanished.

    Images The work falls into two clearly distinct areas of interest.

    The landscape imagery continues many years of work in this field. At present the principle source is photographic, but often it is only the starting point before beginning the long process of selecting, rearranging, cloning and 'painting' as I work towards the final image. They are certainly not just reproductions of photographs; indeed some are unrecognisable in their origins. As for the subject matter I've always been interested in capturing a particular time of day or light, a certain stillness or sense of a possible journey to be embarked upon. Over the years water, paths, gates, hedgerows and field shapes have featured many times as the main features. There has often been a sense of the cycle of Nature at work in its constant growth and decay which underscores many of the most successful prints.

    The figurative work is new as I found that screenprinting to be unsuitable in the past to handle the subtilties. The prints mark a renewed interest in the human figure, both in the form and structure, and in the individual. I'm currently exploring the figure in a context of landscape. At first I used images culled from anywhere including the internet, but as I wanted much more control over the image began using myself as the principle model just as artists have done for hundreds of years. It has been fascinating exploring my own body in this context being made aware of the shapes and forms in a way I have never really been aware of in the past. Psychologically it has been an adventure to begin exploring my own aging self both as an individual and professionally as an artist, and presenting the results in the form of prints for others to view. I'm looking forward to creating complex large scale images in the near future.

    Further reading

    As yet it is perhaps too early for the definitive book on the subject of digital printmaking, but there are hundreds of books on the techniques of digitally manipulating images along with thousands of magazine articles (such as to be found in 'Printmaking Today'). Below are a few references which develop the printmaking side.
     

    Top