Print | World of All Kinds of Art

Giclee Watercolor

June 24th, 2010 admin No comments

Giclee Watercolor

Creating Giclée Fine Art With Wide-Format Printers

A lot of us like looking at fine art but could not afford to own one. If the artist is really skilled, you can expect his or her original work to be really expensive. Or perhaps it is not a matter of the price tag on the work of art in question but a matter of it being priceless.

In such cases, those of us who cannot afford an original piece of fine art or cannot obtain it otherwise will have to settle for art prints. Of course, we all know that the quality of art prints will never be as good as an original – or will they? With today's technology, it is now possible for us to get high-quality art prints that are almost as good as the original, and that is by buying giclée prints made using special wide-format printers.

What Is Giclée?

Giclée is a relatively new term that emerged in the world of fine art in the early 1990s. What it basically refers to is the creation of fine art prints rendered from a digital source file and using a special inkjet printer. The special inkjet printer is usually a wide-format printer or a large-format printer. The word "giclée" is said to have been taken from the terms "le gicleur," which is French for "nozzle," and "gicler," which is also French for "to squirt."

What makes giclée prints so special? For one, giclée prints are guaranteed to last longer than ordinary art prints because they are made using fade-resistant printer inks, which are also called archival inks. For another, giclée prints are almost as good as the original because they have a high resolution, a high degree of accuracy in color rendering, and a faithful approximation of details, among other things. That is because the wide-format printers designed to work with giclée are often 8-color to 12-color inkjet printers.

Advantages of Giclée Printing

Giclée printing gives a lot of advantages to artists and art lovers alike. Perhaps the most important advantage is that it makes both selling and owning art more cost-effective. For the artist, he or she no longer has to reproduce the artwork manually. For the art lover, he or she can indulge in buying art without having to spend a fortune on it.

Making giclée prints also gives a certain amount of control for the artist. By having giclée prints made of his or her work, the artist can print on demand instead of printing the work by batches and then paying for storage and maintenance. The artist can also customize his work for a particular client, not just in terms of size but also in terms of medium used. Many wide-format printers used for giclée printing can work with silk, textured vinyl, cotton canvas, matte photo paper or watercolor paper. So, the artist can experiment with the production of his or her artwork, and the art lover can have the artwork that he or she wants just the way he or she wants it.

In short, giclée prints of fine art using wide-format printers make it more affordable to produce and to own works of art. Moreover, the art lover can get artwork exactly how he or she wants it, and the artist can be more creative in creating his or her art.

About the Author

John C Arkin from printerinkcartridges.printcountry.com the contributor of PrintCountry Articles. More information on the subject is at Creating Giclée Fine Art with Wide-Format Printers, and related resources can be found at Printer Ink Cartridges.