Print Making - Giclees
With the advent of the Giclee, the skill of fine art printing has become even more precise than in the past. Because no screens are used, the prints have a higher apparent resolution than lithographs. The dynamic color range is similar to a serigraph. In the Giclee process, a fine stream of ink, more than four million droplets per second is sprayed onto archival art paper or canvas. The result is similar to an airbrush technique but much finer. Each piece of paper or canvas is carefully hand mounted onto a drum that rotates during printing. Exact calculations of hue, value, and density direct the ink of four nozzles. This method creates a combination of 512 chromatic changes "that is over 3 million possible colors of highly saturated, nontoxic water-based ink." The artists color approval and input is essential for creating the final custom setting for the edition. The latest advancements in the Giclee process are the works of a sophisticated fine art production facility that utilizes the highest resolution digital printers. The adaptation of fine art reproduction is collaboration between the artist and a skilled printing craftsman. These printing facilities have extended the boundaries of current technology by customizing their equipment, designing new programs, and offering protective coatings to ensure quality standards for the collector. The Giclee print displays a full color spectrum and captures every fine distinction of the original painting whether it is watercolor, oil, or acrylic.
Serigraphy
Serigraphy, ("Seri", the Latin word for silk, and the word "grapho", a Greek term meaning "to write or draw"). Serigraphy was first recognized as a fine art medium in the late 1930s. A squeegee is used to push ink through a screen onto a substrate by means of a color stencil. Each color requires a different stencil. Screen-printing is a versatile type of printing process, and is still widely used today in creating and producing high quality representations of original artwork. Serigraphy came into favor in the 1950s by those on the cutting edge of the Op Art movement. Jackson Pollack, Roy Lichtenstein also utilized serigraphy, and the process was the method of choice for Andy Warhol, whose preoccupation with it brought the medium to new levels of legitimacy. David Willardson uses serigraphy exclusively in all of his Pep Art limited editions.
Lithography
True lithography is one of the finest traditions in the history of printmaking. Created in the 1790s by Alois Senefelder, the lithography process has attracted artists of renown for over two centuries. Masters such as Goya, Delacroix, Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Rauschenburg and Johns all have been captivated by this process of "stone writing".
The twentieth-century revival of lithography as an art form was first demonstrated in 1960 by June Wayne at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, now known as the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico. Several artists continue the tradition at workshops around the world, such as Mourlot in Paris, Tyler Graphics in New Jersey, PrintMakers Fine Art in Arizona, Segura Publishing in Arizona and the Atelier Ettinger in New York.
Lithography is based on the basic principle that oil and water don't mix. First, a drawing is created using an oily substance such as a grease pencil or tushe (a greasy liquid). The image is drawn directly on a stone, a plate, or an alternate surface such as Mylar or transfer paper, and then transferred to a stone or plate. The stone is then chemically treated to accept and retain water. Ink, being oil-based, is rolled over the surface. The ink will stick to the drawing but not the wet stone. Then, under extreme pressure, the ink image is transferred to a piece of paper and a print is created.
|
