Saturday, April 19, 2008

Embellishing Digital Prints

Many digital artists embellish their prints to add texture and/or color. In my view, this process may be putting their prints at risk. I want to be clear that I have no argument with protecting the print, canvas especially needs some protection. Nor would I discourage an artist from adding to the print for artistic reasons, such as collage or metallic paint. I merely want to share my concerns about this process from a technical standpoint, and then note the reasons for my discomfort with using embellishment solely for the sake of making the print look like an impasto painting: something it is not.

Texture Gels

I like digital prints just the way they come out of my printer. I also like the depth and richness that a protective coating can add to a print. I do not consider the protective coating to be an embellishment. Embellishments to me are things or proceses that are added to a digital print after it is printed for some purpose other than protection or display. I consider texture, collage, and paint to be embellishments.

I do occasionally add embellishments, although I have reservations about some forms of that process. I must confess to adding brush stroke texture at customer request and not to achieve and grand artistic purpose. I still sleep pretty well. I just think that one should consider the possible effects of doing this and perhaps share the risk of those effects with the customer so that a considered decision is made before the embellishments are added.

Personally, I use gels to add texture only after the prints have been stretched or mounted and protected with a coating. I feel this minimizes the risk of cracking the coating or affecting the ink surface with gel. I use Eco Print Shield applied with a brush to the mounted/stretched canvas. I also keep a small canvas trim piece that I coat just as I coat the print in order to test its flexibility after each coat. Using a brush, two coats is usually enough to keep the scrap from cracking. I let this dry at least 24 hours.

If brush stroke texture is going to be added, it should be done only after the protective coating is completely dry. I use Golden brand gels almost exclusively. Soft/thin gels on relatively low contrast areas like skin and sky, and heavy/thick gels where paint would be thicker or in multiple layers as in trees, rocks, waves, hair, and clothing. As an oil painter, I naturally follow the lines and gestures of the work as though it were an oil painting, and let the gel leave brush texture where it will, along lines of definition and contrast. I think it is important to cover the entire print. I then allow the gel to dry completely and cover the gel with another protective coating layer. It is important to follow manufacturer instructions to prevent cracking, especially if the print will be rolled, stretched or remounted.

Here is the technical rub. I wonder whether the gel texture affects the way light strikes the ink surface and might not alter the inevitable fading process in a negative way. How could it not? The varying heights and shapes of the gel are sure to refract the light in varying patterns onto the pigments, and by this affect them in varying and uneven ways.

Paint Embellishments

Much of the acrylic paint I see used to enhance a print is color that compliments what is already in the print. Perhaps a rich cadmium red highlight in an apple, or a splash of ultramarine blue in water or the iris of the eye. Now, let's say I get that color just right, and it looks great. My question is what will it look like a few years from now? Ten years? When the babies we are all painting are getting married? I just have trouble believing that the ink will change color (fade) at the same rate as the paint, no matter how we (and our customers) protect the paintings in the coming years. Will that cad red stick out like a gash across the apple, or the UMB seem like iridescent pollution in the sea a few years from now?

I do make allowance for the metallic paints and pigments that are used for very special purposes, such as the metallics found in the style of Gustav Klimt paintings. If an artist is going to add paint to a print, I would offer that colors that don't depend on surrounding color for their balance may be the best choices. That really does offer an enhancement that is both worthwhile and less likely to become out of balance with the rest of the painting in coming decades even if it does fade at a different rate than the inks in the print. Again I would be sure the painting is protected both before and after the paint, pigment or collage is applied.

Digtal Artist Pride

I suppose my discomfort with pure brush stroke texturing of a print is that it seems like deception, a trick we play on our customers, or they play on their friends and family, to make the paintings look like they are traditional impasto paint. I do it because customers still insist on it. But in meeting their demands, I don't want to give them a little surprise years from now that might ruin a cherished portrait for them.

Call me conservative, but I use the best printers, the best archival pigmented inks, and the best substrates. I mount the works with care and acid free mounting techniques, and I protect them with environmentally friendly U.V. protective coatings. I can't bring myself to paint on them without having more information about the long term result.

As I noted before, I am thrilled by the prints that come out of my printer. I add coating because it both helps preserve, deepen and enrich the print. As a developing art that is making great strides gaining acceptance by both our patrons and our contemporary artists and critics, I do not believe it is in the best interests of our new art to give appearance that our prints, as and of themselves, are wanting anything. In particular, our work is not trying to be an oil painting or acrylic painting, those too are what they are. Ours is the digital print, and it is more than sufficient being just that. We can always make them more, but let us not try to make them something they are not.

Making an effort to change the print to look like an impasto painting may reflect an uncertain self image by the digital artist and send a signal that the artist is not satisfied with the digital print for what it is. It may risk the long term well being of the print, and it is not worth the risk. For my part, I look forward to a time when our digital prints are accepted and valued for just what they are and not because we can make them look like what they aren't.

Gary

2 comments:

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