Multiply Yourself - Printing To Canvas
Arts and Entertainment May 1st, 2008
Every Artist has toiled with pricing their art, they may even have purposely under-priced their art to keep the price point reasonable to generate a sale. To determine the true cost an Artist must account for the cost of stretcher bars, canvas, paint, mileage, fuel and labor, with everything considered art on canvas could be quite expensive and might not ever sell, however, the true value may be what the market will bear. How does an Artist recoup their cost?
Today, with affordable scanners and giclee printers it is very easy and cost effective to have your original art scanned and printed to canvas or paper. Years ago it was very expensive to have artwork scanned and it was even more expensive to have it printed to canvas, all of that has changed. Many Giclee Printers will allow the artist to pay for “reprints” as needed. Other Printers may require larger quantities to justify set-up, in either case it far easier to sell a reproduction of the original when it can be printed to canvas with just a phone call.
Large format Giclee Printers are much more affordable than they were 5 years ago, in the hands of an experienced operator the output is extraordinary. There are several steps to this process, regardless of the equipment, the artwork must be scanned, possibly stitched, color corrected, retouched and printed to canvas or paper. The output, when printed on canvas, can be sold “as is” or it can be stretched. Selling an unstretched canvas is, in my opinion, a huge mistake. If you leave the stretching to the customer you are “postponing” the debut of your art on their wall. You have unknowingly tasked your customer to find someone to stretch your art. It is worth the extra effort to seek-out a Giclee Printer that offers canvas stretching – many don’t. This subject is an article in itself - Giclee Printers are sending business away by not stretching the canvas they sell.
As with any profession some are better than others, once your image is archived it is relatively certain that each subsequent print is identical to other. There is little doubt that many Artists’ have considered this as a viable option and have determined that it is far too expensive to reproduce their artwork, I would disagree. I myself am an Artist, Pointillism with pen and ink, tedious, mind numbing and a tremendous strain on the “peepers”. Try working for 150-300 hours under a lighted magnifying lens, then tell me you are willing to sell your art for what the market will bear, forget about factoring the hourly rate. I have approached this subject the same way many artists have, I started to create, I taught myself to frame and I realized that I must Multiply Myself!
David is a self-taught Artist, Custom Picture Framer and Inventor. His most recent creation is a fully pneumatic canvas stretching machine found at http://www.canvas-stretching-machine.com
Tags: art on canvas, artists, canvas stretching, giclee prints, large format printers
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