chooprint giclee print journal

Using a Wacom pad

2009-11-20T00:06:00.000-08:00

Pedro recently bought a Wacom graphics tablet and has started making prints with it.

For anyone who not familiar with graphics tools and applications a Wacom tablet is a digital pad which connects to a computer and allows the userto draw directly onto it.

I like them very much - the prints have the look of traditional lithographs. He’s promised to make some more and they will appear on the site early next year

Exhibition of Artists' Books

2009-11-12T11:29:00.000-08:00

We’ve been thinking about possibly doing artists books on the site and it was interesting to visit an exhibition at the Rocket Gallery, which is part of the Tea Building in Shoreditch, titled ‘Book a Table’ which was a group exhibition showing coffee tables by contemporary designers along with artists' books. I was particularly interested in looking at the books by Julian Opie, Sol Lewitt and Ib Geertsen. Some beautiful tables too, I particularly liked the solid oak stacking tables by Tomoko Azumi and David Restorick’s sportscar-yellow coffee table.
It was an interesting exhibition partly for the range of approaches taken as well as some of the very impressive work.

Lambeth Open Studios

2009-11-05T11:39:00.000-08:00

In October we took part in the Lambeth Open Studios event. Our studio at Railton Road was nicely tidied up (quite an achievement in itself), we put our work up on the walls and Lyn made some cakes for everyone.

To be honest we weren’t expecting a lot of people to be interested enough to come along but in the event we had well over 100 people visit over the two days, which was pretty good.

The showing round duties were split between myself and Pedro and we found a lot of people were interested to know more about the technique of Giclée printmaking and were impressed by the vivid colours possible and by the quality of the Somerset Enhanced paper we use to print on (which looks like any normal ‘art’ paper). We had a lot of visits from other artists who were interested in getting into Giclée themselves, and several who asked about us outputting their work on our printer.

All in all, a worthwhile exercise, but a lot of work and very hard on your voice - I felt like I’d been talking non-stop for two days. A big thank you to all the people who came along and for all the interest in our work.

2009-08-09T23:22:00.001-07:00

Ian and myself spent the weekend of 18-19th July at Urban Art 2009, Brixton. We were very pleased with how the work looked up, and people's reaction to it. The Saturday went very well, lots of people walking by, however our poor position at the end of the street resulted in a very lonesome Sunday afternoon. Threatening rain didn't help the situation, we spent a lot of time wrestling with plastic sheeting to protect the prints. All in all a good weekend, a few sales, good coffee and cakes and some interesting people to talk too.

Urban Art

2009-07-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

The urban art weekend isn't far off now, so we're up to our ears with getting the prints framed up and ready, and organising plastic sheeting etc in case it rains. Hopefully it won't happen but (as Chuck Berry once said) you never can tell.

Hopefully we'll sell stuff but, failing that, it'd be good to generate some interest and visits to the web site.

Another thing we've started to use recently is Google adwords which is generating traffic through the site, even though it's only cost us about a tenner so far. It sure beats the web windows ad we took in the Independant a few months back which cost £250.00 and generated exactly zero hits.

2009-05-12T14:36:00.000-07:00

We are beginning to think about how we can show our prints to their best advantage at Urban Art 2009, its going to be a challenge. I think we might have to have a dress rehearsal before the weekend arrives. Lets hope it doesn't rain...

Ian and Peter went along to Josephine Avenue to look at our 'pitch. The yellow lines are our boundaries...

2009-05-12T14:19:00.000-07:00

The posters have arrived for Urban Art 2009. They are certainly eye catching.

2009-03-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

A reconnaissance trip to the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park on Sunday proved to be a bit disappointing. Lots and lots of people milling around and by the looks of it buying work. But... we couldn't really see our work sitting comfortable there. I also think we might go stir crazy if we had to 'man' a stall for the duration of the event. Met some very nice people though.

Our advert in the Style Magazine of the Independent on Sunday has not, as yet, significantly upped the visits to our site. A bit of a shot in the dark but we thought it was worth giving a go.

2009-03-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. We have got a pitch to sell our work at Urban Art 2009. Its a 2 day 'outdoor event' 18 & 19 July along Josephine Avenue in Brixton. It's a big change for us plying our wares away from the web, we will have to see how it goes. If the weather is good it should be a lot of fun. Urban Arts website is www.urbanart.co.uk

We decided to increase the cost of our prints, from March 1st. Looking at the prices of comparable work we felt that we were very, very cheap and that this wasn't helping our credibility (as printmakers) or reflecting the quality of the materials or work produced.

While we were on a roll we also decided to offer a larger range of print sizes. Which will hopefully encourage sales. Until now all our work was A2 which required a lot of wall space. Personally I prefer to work on a smaller scale so I'm happy.

We have also splashed out on a small advert in next weeks Independent on Sunday's style magazine (15/3/09). Another new departure for us. It will be interesting to see if it brings us any new visitors to our website.

International Art Fair

2009-02-27T05:26:00.000-08:00

Lyn and I visited the International Art Fair last Saturday at The RCA. Some fabulous prints by Terry Frost and Peter Blake, though my favourite was a litho print by William Scott in lovely muted colours.

Giclée vs Lino

2009-02-05T05:19:00.000-08:00

I’ve been doing some lino printing lately which I’m finding enjoyable. It provides an interesting contrast to digital printmaking.

The main difference is the scale and speed of it - While I’m working on my giclee prints (usually in illustrator on an apple mac) I tend to go though different colour + shape options very quickly; keeping the versions I feel are worthwhile and moving on to a new slightly different version. At the end I’ll review the options and decide which one most successfully realises my ideas. From there it’s taken to the digital printer itself, where I’ll output the print and tweak the colours until I’m happy with the end result.

Working in lino, conversely, is much slower and you can’t so easily make throwaway decisions. Also, if you make a mistake you either have to abandon the print or somehow adapt and incorporate it.

I made some sketches on the motorway up to Liverpool just after Christmas - colours from the neon signs and lights from the cars against the night sky which I’m looking at using as the basis for some prints using lino, which I imagine will feed back into my Giclée prints eventually.

Sites I like

2008-11-19T08:50:00.000-08:00

I’m interested in records as objects and I like record sleeve design. I don’t mean album covers but the generic seeves of the record company that non-picture sleeve singles were sold in. I came across a website I found very interesting called record envelope. The site has images of lots of record sleeves mostly from the sixties and seventies. I like the way that the designs are all built around a circle placed central to a square, and how they use that in one way or another.

Some of the designs, such as one for a German label called Amiga, build the design around the circle and then others will intersect it and use it as a disruptive element (the Vocallion and Kent sleeves for instance).

Another site I like is grain edit. Lots of interesting graphic design stuff.

New Homepage Layout

2008-09-22T01:47:00.000-07:00

I’ve finally posted up the new css version of the homepage, which I’ve been working on for a while, not least because I’ve had to learn css layout to do it. Anyone interested in the more technical aspects can follow this link: http://www.glish.com/css/

The homepage has been through three versions so far - the first two were built using html tables and flash. The beauty of laying out with css is that it cuts down on the code which underlies your web page thus making it more efficient (i.e, it’ll load into the browser faster) and it is much better for people who use screen readers etc to navigate the web.

I’ve also cut out the flash content because it might look nice but doesn’t actually add any usability advantages to the site.

Now I’ve learnt enough css to lay out the homepage I’ll be working my way through the rest of the site, as I find time to do it.

2008-09-17T05:45:00.000-07:00

Last week when the October issue of Elle Decoration dropped through the letterbox I grabbed it with even more enthusiasm than usual. Speed reading through I found one of Ian's prints, 'Cylinders' on page 136. It felt good... we had hoped that we might get something in, having been asked to send a print into the Elle Decoration offices in early August. But until you see the issue itself you never know.

We are now watching the numbers visiting chooprint.com to see if it has generated any extra interest. We had sent two press packs into Elle Decoration before they telephoned and asked to see 'Cylinders'.

Ian's 'Orange Circles' was in the September 07 issue of Grand Designs. That generated sales as well as extra site traffic. More recently we have had images in two local magazines Living South in June and Rise in August . These also came through press packs that we have sent out. Well worth the effort.

A Bit of Background....

2008-09-17T00:48:00.000-07:00

Chooprint came about originally because we became excited by the possibilities of digital printmaking. Lyn and Pedro were doing a postgraduate course in digital artwork and animation, and the design office I was working in had a large format digital printer capable of producing large areas of flat brilliant colour. I became very interested in how I could apply it to my own artwork. I also liked it because it’s a semi-industrial modern process - similar to screen printing which I’ve also worked in and found very satisfying.

One thing I didn't realise at the time is that art produced on a high quality inkjet printer has a name - giclée. Follow this link for more information: www.giclee-information.org/giclee_history.html

The first decision we had to make was what size of prints we wanted to produce and which model of printer to buy. There was an overwhelming (and confusing) choice on offer. We decided to buy a Hewlett Packard Designjet 130, capable of producing A2+ size prints, on paper up to 300gsm, which seemed reasonably priced at around £1000, and was well reviewed. This later turned out to be a mistake which I’ll go into further on.

We tried several different papers and settled on Somerset Enhanced Velvet 225gsm. After experimenting with different settings and output from different file formats we found that the best most predictable results were achieved using Photoshop native (.psd) or tiff files.

We’ve all developed our own ways of working - I tend to work on my ideas initially in a sketchbook which I’ll then take into illustrator. Once I’ve got an artwork which is ready for output, I’ll open it up in photoshop and save it as a tiff file. From there I’ll produce a series of A4 size proofs output from the printer, tweaking the colour settings until I’m happy with the result.

Another early decision was to use a website to show and sell the work, which seemed appropriate given the digital origins of the prints. Putting the work on a website also allows us to show the work how and when we want to - effectively running an online gallery.

I put the website together and we decided on a name - chooprint.com - chosen for it’s quirkiness. The website went online in early 2006.

The problem with the Designjet printer emerged a few months after we bought it, and was down to the type of ink used in the machine. What we didn’t realise to begin with is that there are two different types of ink used in inkjet printing - dye based inks and pigment inks. Dye based inks give a more brilliant colour but are less stable than pigment inks - the Designjet uses dye based ink.

There was a noticable fading in the prints after a month or two, and the tendency to do this seemed particularly strong in colours towards the reddish end of the spectrum. We made enquiries to see if the problem could be resolved by using a different paper type, which led to us doing our own lightfastness tests - mostly through exposing printed samples to direct sunlight and comparing the results. In the end we made a decision to swap the Designjet for a printer which used pigment inks.

Ultimately, we decided, prints output using dye based inks would not be considered true fine art giclee prints. We sold our original printer on ebay and bought an Epson 3800 large format printer, which is the printer we currently use.

2008-09-16T13:55:00.000-07:00

Chooprint.com is an online gallery selling giclee prints. We, Lyn Medcalf Ian Scaife and Peter Currey, began working together on chooprint a couple of years ago. It was a simple idea to set up a website to sell our own prints and possibly in the future to sell other artists work.

I don't think any of us anticipated the amount of work and energy we would need to put into chooprint to get it up and running. It has been, and still is, a helter skelter of a learning curve. It has also been really, really enjoyable.

First entry

2008-09-03T03:37:00.000-07:00

This is my first entry, to make sure it all works. More to follow shortly...