Sunday, November 22, 2009

Giclée Prints

I recently discovered a printing method called Giclée, while looking for ways to transform my walls into my own mini gallery. There are such great artworks out there and walls should be filled with awe-inspiring creativity. If not only for the hope that surrounding yourself with talent... might inspire your own creativity ;P then for your human soul, because down to basics... viewing beautiful things makes you feel tingly and happy inside ;)

So to quote Wikipedia: Giclée (pronounced /ʒiːˈkleɪ/ "zhee-clay" or /dʒiːˈkleɪ, from French [ʒiˈkle]) is an invented name for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using any high quality ink-jet printing and is often used in galleries and print shops. Giclée is generally a fine art term, that has come to be associated with prints using fade-resistant "archival" inks (including solvent inks) and the inkjet printers that use them. These printers use the CMYK color process but may have multiple cartridges for variations of each color based on the CcMmYK color model (e.g. light magenta and light cyan inks in addition to regular magenta and cyan); this increases the apparent resolution and color gamut and allows smoother gradient transitions. A wide variety of substrates are available including various textures and finishes such as matte photo paper, watercolor paper, cotton canvas, or artist textured vinyl.

You can purchase these high quality Giclée prints at Allposters.com. A lot of well known and not so well known art is for sale using this printing method. And if you read the description next to any of the Giclée artworks for sale at Allposters.com it says: "This art print was created using a sophisticated digital printer. The Giclee printing process delivers a fine stream of archival ink on archival paper, resulting in vivid, pure color and exceptional detail that is suitable for museum or gallery display."

So to make things even more complicated for myself I also decided since I have to frame a whole bunch of artworks, including the ones I plan to make in the future... I should buy my own framing equipment. So I took out some framing books from the library like the Home book of picture framing by Oberrecht, Kenn.

It sounded like a straight forward thing to do however, framing equipment can get a bit complicated, you have miter saws, routers, matt cutters etc etc. And then you have to get the various materials to make the frames..wood, glass, nails, matting board, framing tape, corner clamps etc etc, and the materials that touch the artworks has to be acid free archival standard, so your Giclee's will last longer. It's a lot of tools especially if you're routing your own wood, but I thought as an artist it might be worth the effort. I did find out later that you can buy the wood online routed to size but alas I have my equipment already. I haven't tried out the equipment yet, but I must say I'am a bit nervous about using power tools with large blades...eek...Let's just hope the equipment doesn't gather dust...I will have to report back later on my success or failure...hopefully with all ten digits in tact ;)

My husband and I decided for our living room to get old commercial or advertisment type prints, like the ones usually found under the vintage tag at Allposters.com. .

These are the one's we've selected:

Poster Advertising an Exhibition of the Collection Du Chat Noir Cabaret at the Hotel Drouot, Paris




Poster Advertising an Exhibition of the Collection Du Chat Noir Cabaret at the Hotel Drouot, Paris

Giclee Print


Steinlen,...


Buy at AllPosters.com



This cat poster is quite popular, and I'm not the kind of person that likes going for the popular artworks, but I like cats...;)



Le Frou-Frou




Le Frou-Frou

Giclee Print


Weiluc,...


Buy at AllPosters.com






Cycles Sirius




Cycles Sirius

Giclee Print


PAL (Jean de...


Buy at AllPosters.com




Copertoni Impermeabili Moretti




Copertoni Impermeabili Moretti

Giclee Print


Mauzan, Achille...


Buy at AllPosters.com





There are so many prints to select from a person could go insane with choice!

Unfortunately we move around so often I haven't had the chance to purchase any prints or make any frames yet....;)

And if you're looking for more original Giclée prints artist Shirin Sahba http://limonana.blogspot.com/ is selling limited edition Giclée prints of some of her paintings. Beautiful stuff!!!
also check out her website at http://www.shirinsahba.com/

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