| To understand the
art of giclee, one must know the giclee definion.
Giclee printing techniques were born in the late
part of the twentieth century. Initially used by
Iris printers to create proofs for magazine
publications. The giclee prints would be a way for
the management to get an accurate idea of what the
finished product would finally look like. To ensure
that they got the closest possible recreation of the
original, the company experimented with various
techniques. Originally these prints would fade
quickly. However, with an improvement in techniques,
new giclee prints have been seen to successfully
endure the test of time.
Gradually, the
printing techniques were perfected and giclee
printers became synonymous with the creation of fine
art. Consequently, fine art giclee printers gained
such a reputation for the excellent product they
were capable of creating that the term ‘giclee’
became associated with superior quality and the
demand for artist quality giclee printers grew
rapidly. One of the reasons why giclee printers
enhanced the quality of prints was that giclee
printers had and have many cartridges of printing
colors. This facilitates the use of color variations
and hence these printers are capable of catering for
a wider variety of color, in an enhanced method of
the familiar CMYK process.
Affordable fine art giclee prints can be created on
various printers these days. This is because all
major companies like Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Epson,
Kodak and Color Span employ giclee printing supply
and hence produce superior quality prints.
For artists, these
printers are not for the purpose of wholesale giclee
printing. In fact, artists prefer to create limited
editions of their artwork. This is important to add
value to their product as well. However, it is more
economical to create giclee prints in bulk as the
cost per print is thereby reduced. This fact may not
generate much concern for an artist because he or
she can opt to produce giclee print on demand and
hence does not have to bear the cost of production
at all.
The cost of the
print and its unique quality is borne by the person
who purchases the art work and art lovers would
actually prefer to pay more for a rare work of art,
even if the art work is a print.
demand, "Giclée" can be an economical alternative
when producing limited print editions. Giclée style
printing has the added advantage of allowing the
artist to control every aspect of the image, its
color, the substrate printed on, and even allows the
artist to own and operate the printer itself.
Because of this, Giclée style prints can technically
be called “prints”, i.e. an image where the artist
has a hand in actual production.
Giclee fine art
printing may employ different techniques like the
technique called ‘aquatint’. This technique was
popular with Spanish Artist Goya and many Goya
graphic designs were created using the aquatint
technique in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. On the other hand, Japanese artists have
demonstrated their preference for the blind
technique of giclee printing. |
