Giclées

Giclées on paper are available 8″ x 10″ up to 16” x 20” image size.  Price range for the above is $40 – $150

Giclees on canvas are available in various sizes. Please contact me directly for further information and pricing at my email:  janet@tapawingostudio.ca

What is a giclée ?

The contemporary Giclée has become a valuable part of the limited edition fine art world. “Giclée” is a French term which means to spray ink. The pronunciation of giclée is “zhee-clay.”

Essentially, a giclée print is the reproduction of an original work of art (created by conventional means, such as painting, drawing, etc.) using a highly specialized inkjet printer.

Giclées have a higher resolution than offset lithographs and the dynamic color range is greater than that of a serigraph. Giclées are created by a method of printing in which the image is scanned and digitally enhanced on a computer to match the original fine art. The image is then sent to a high-resolution inkjet printer, which sprays millions of microscopic droplets of ink onto various substrates to create an image with smooth tonal gradation. These unique jets are able to vary the width of the ink stream to as small as 1/100th the width of human hair. In the art world this is generally regarded as the highest quality reproduction available.

Despite the fact that artists were experimenting with this medium as far back as the late 1970s, fine art inkjet printing emerged as an art form in the early 1990s. The term giclée was originally only applied to a very specific form of printing: the output from the Iris inkjet printer (more specifically the Iris 3024, 3047, or 3047G).Today, giclée can refer to any digital fine art canvas print output on a quality inkjet printer. Such well-known brands as Epson, MacDermid Colorspan and Hewlett Packard have high end 6 – 12 color printers that are used to make fine art giclées.

The entire process of production to achieve the final fine art giclée is an artistic endeavor within itself, requiring a great deal of patience and skill. A professional quality giclée starts with a high resolution digital photograph. This file must then be color corrected and adjusted to match the original artwork. Matching the final print to the original painting is a demanding process, because the digital colors of an image (which are composed of three colors: red, green and blue) must be adjusted to look true once printed on canvas with the printer (which uses four colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and black). This requires the use of a colorist and is overseen by the artist. The file preparation and proofing can take anywhere from a couple of hours to weeks, depending on the challenges posed by each image.

Printing is an integral part of the giclée process, and care must be taken to ensure the best result possible. It is essential to use a high quality printer with professional grade nozzles. These nozzles are able to apply ink dots as small as 1/100th the width of human hair. Giclées are printed on specially treated canvas and fine art papers using archival inks. The end result is the finest quality product available. Fine art giclées printed on high quality canvas do not need to be framed under glass.

Today, images reproduced using the giclée process are of such a high quality that they can be found on display at museums around the world, including The Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim.