About Giclee Printing
About Lithography Lithography was a very easy medium
for the artist. He simply drew one picture on the stone which was then used to produce
many copies of the identical image on paper. Toulouse-Lautrec went wild with it, flooding
Paris with his posters.
Original hand drawn lithographs are next in line to original oils or acrylics as each is an
artist creation. Instead of creating the painting with brushes and oils, the artist must master
techniques and temperament of the plates and inks as tools to create his work of art.
Because each color is hand applied one at a time by the artist and master printer, the resulting
lithograph is regarded as a unique original because no two will come out exactly alike.
Offset Lithography:
Original fine art lithographs should not be confused with today's offset lithography. In this
process a photograph is taken of the original work and the image transferred to a thin metal plate
that has been treated chemically to accept oil based inks only on the image area where water is repelled.
The non-image areas accept water but repel the ink. The plate is fastened to a roller and
is inked before it comes in contact
with another roller that has a rubber blanket surface. The image is
transferred to the rubber blanket and thence from the rubber blanket roller
onto the paper or canvas. Since the plate with the image only contacts the soft
rubber blanket a number of high quality prints can be made in this manner from
the same plate. However, the artist usually elects to
print only a limited number of them and then destroy the plate in order to preserve the integrity of
the edition. Each print is then signed and numbered by the artist.
Giclee (pronounced shee-clay)is derived from the French verb Gicler
meaning to spray or squirt. In the Giclee printing process, a fine stream of ink
- millions of droplets per second - are sprayed onto the archival art
paper or canvas. It is today the best process of art reproduction known, guaranteeing
the collector over 100- year archival life (based on laboratory simulation). Because
of the richness, detail and depth of color that this process offers, it is rapidly
supplanting offset lithography as the standard for quality art reproduction.
The images are generated from high resolution digital scans of the original art work.
and prints are created typically using professional 8 and 12 color ink jet printers.
Originally, only an image printed on an IrisGprint 4- color machine was accepted as a Giclee print
but all kinds of advances in ink jet technology have produced much better machines than the old Iris.
Modern Giclees are produced on a variety of printers such as those manufactured by Epson,
MacDermid Color Span, and Hewlett-Packard. These modern technology printers are capable of producing
incredibly detailed prints for both the fine art and photographic markets.
Finally, the archived digital files will not deteriorate in quality with time as will negatives,
film, and even the original watercolor. A print can be made any time and will have the same quality
and freshness as the original print.
Fine Art Lithography:
Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in 1798. This breakthrough was to the development of fine art
printing what the invention of the printing press was for the written word. In its original form the artist
created his image with a grease pencil on a flat limestone plate which was then spayed with water.
Only the ungreased surface of the limestone absorbed the water. Ink was then applied with a roller.
The wet stone surface repelled the water insoluble ink while the greasy image held it. Paper was then pressed
against the stone and the inked image transferred to the paper. The stone could be reinked and the
process repeated to give a number of prints.
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