Fine art prints – all science or part magic?
Meet Duffy. Not Craig to you or I, no, Duffy. And he’s not a mad scientist either, despite the beard.
Duffy runs “Duffography” – good brand name, right? – although it probably only captures a small part of what he does so well. I mean he *is* an ace behind the camera, but there’s multiple aspects to his work in making fine art prints for so many creatives in this area – south Wales and the Welsh marches.
Duffy knows a lot of artists. And not because he’s a regular frequenter of galleries. He doesn’t need to be. Artists flock to him.
In fact, he doesn’t even need to advertise his brand. He’s too busy. There’s no time for marketing. His reputation precedes him and word of mouth makes Duffy a busy, busy feller.
Magic man
Simply put, this is because Duffy’s a magician.
Behind his magic… red-hot camera skills and a humungous printer in the modest shed at the end of his garden. Along with a steady supply of original artworks in all mediums – from ceramic murals to traditional oil paintings on canvas. (Yes, I haven’t forgotten the science, we’ll get to that.)
The fab thing about Duffy is the obvious glee and delight with which he greets new artworks to his shed. (We artists are just a delivery mechanism – only kidding.) He’s straight in there, assessing textures and tricky colours, teasing out the varied challenges that come with digitising hand-made art.
He says he has no colour theory training, but concedes he has an innate eye for it. And you can’t argue with that when you see his magic in action.
He’s a bit of genius at nailing colour, because – though you might not think it – reproducing an artwork this way is devilishly tricky to do. And you have to have high standards if you want to create collectable limited edition prints to offer your discerning customers.
So here’s the science, at last
Long before I’d ever heard of fine art prints (or “giclée” in art-speak), I was learning to make editions of linocut prints and etchings, which I hand-printed and tinted in a “slow-art” analogue process. As a printmaker-artist, I realise this is a confusing topic that begs a bit of technical explanation.
Fine art or giclée printing is a method that involves taking a digitised image to reproduce using an inkjet printer. The term "giclée" is from the French for “spray”, coined by Jack Duganne, a printmaker.
In a nutshell, these steps have to happen to produce your high quality fine art print:
Duffy takes a high res digital photograph of the artwork placed under professional lighting. He calls this “capture”. He takes several photographs of medium- or large-sized works.
Using Photoshop software, he optimises and amalgamates the photograph(s), with particular sensitivity to colour, matching and highlighting texture and mark making depending on the artwork. (As my work is often collaged, layered and gestural, it really is a delight to see this so clearly in the prints when I pick them up.)
He test prints the digital image before finalising the capture he can work with.
He makes a file of multiple images for printing with minimal paper waste. This way you can print on demand, not the whole edition in one go.
And just for the record – for the geeks among you – he uses 12-colour LUCIA Ex pigment ink and 310gsm Hahnemühle etching paper made in Germany. The prints will never fade and the strong paper has a matt finish that oozes quality.
For delivery, he cuts acid-free picture mounts on site and prepares a protective wrap. So each print is ready for the artist to sign and edition from their studio.
A fine art print is for life as well as Christmas (& birthdays & just because art matters, you know)
The Fine Art Trade Guild has set minimum standards to define a fine art print.
Long version (their words): “it must score 6 or more on the Blue Wool Scale for light fastness (“UV stable”), with an acidity level of between pH7 and pH9, to minimise discolouring”. (Geeky enough for you?) Translation: use archival paper printed with pigment-based archival inks, which are lightfast.
The quality of the paper is very important. Hahnemühle have been producing mould-made papers for over 435 years. They definitely know their onions by now!
To achieve a very high standard of colour reproduction with all the nuances of an original artwork, a typical inkjet printer will use the 12-colour pigment based ink set, including red, blue, green, grey, photo grey, cyan, photo cyan, magenta, photo magenta, yellow, regular black, and matte black. Just as our man Duffy does.
But enough of Duffy – it will go to his head! Rest assured, your prints are lovingly made. And – because I want to keep it special – I only ever edition 50 of each image at a specific size. (Most artists offer 100s. Some artists go up to the limit of 850 set by the Trade Guild, but that does *not* feel very limited to me!) Plus I offer a certificate too.
The prints speak for themselves… I know it’s not the same but you can see in my online shop how the artworks are beautifully reproduced. And to see them in person, do visit Skirrid Gallery in my home – it’ll be a pleasure to show you how the prints look in bespoke frames (now that’s a blog post for another day).
p.s. no Duffys were harmed in the making of this blog post
