Working Digitally: Originals & Editions

With the digital art I do, I can't really sell an original. That original is a virtual file that can be copied easily and with no loss in quality. That original is not something you can hang on your wall. With film photography, one could at least still touch the physical original: the negative; with digital work the connection with something physical disappears until the virtual is deliberately retranslated into the physical through, for example, printing.

As much as my "original" is not something to touch or sell (though I suppose artists out there can try it), once it is printed onto something physical, the result is a print that can be made again and again. The work can be reproduced just as long as the file still exists and the printing methods still exist -- and the printing methods available allow for the prints to be made identically, over and over again. Unlike traditional printing methods, which had physical (though again not usually sellable) originals that could wear down over time, and which had processes that could vary the look of the prints just slightly from one to the next, the 1000th print of a digital work could very well look the same as the first.

The question becomes: "How many prints of my original work should I make?" The options include: A) only one, B) a limited edition; and C) an open edition, unlimited run. Options A and B are, for digital work, rather artificial. An artist would limit their run mainly to control the supply of their work and thereby (hopefully) increase the demand for it, or to cater to those art collectors out there who enjoy the exclusivity of owning the only version of a work out there (or one of the few versions, in the case of a limited run).

To limit the run of your work, digitally, can be a sound business decision. Philosophically, however, it is rather undemocratic, from a social equality standpoint.

A snippet from the preface of the book I'm reading is relevant, here:

"It was a point of honor with [good] writers to make the best of themselves available to the largest possible public at the lowest possible cost. John Ruskin, the greatest of all English writers on art, was wholeheartedly of that persuasion. The ideal of universal education was at hand: how could good writers address themselves to the privileged only?" -- John Russel, The Meanings of Modern Art

I am not interested in elitism, exclusionism, or in helping anyone feel particularly privileged in comparison to someone else. I am interested in delighting or interesting someone, in adding something to the world that enriches -- perhaps simply through that modern-day self-expression-through-purchase that seems so prevalent today. The chance that someone else in the world might own the same piece of art that you do is something I tend to view as something uniting, rather than dividing. The chance that that someone else will own everything else that you've chosen to purchase because it meant something to you is rather smaller.

This is why I hope to be able to function selling open edition prints rather than by artificially limiting my work to single or limited edition runs.

Color Differences

I promised a picture of what color differences I'm dealing with. For those of you that deal with printing or any kind of color management, this won't be the least bit revealing -- you'll have had to deal with exactly these issues. For me, I knew there would be problems, but I didn't realize how hard it can be to fix them!

Below is a picture of three differing versions of the same image: 1) a print-out on my not particularly high-quality home printer, 2) the image on my screen, and 3) a professionally-printed proof. As you can see, the colors are different in each, and I've called out two of the color areas specifically, underneath, comparing the looks.

Working Digitally

In this process of getting myself set up for selling prints, I've had occasion to do a good bit of thinking about the medium choice I'm making: digital. Obviously, the end product isn't a digital product, as much as someone who makes serigraphs doesn't sell their screen, I don't sell my digital file or a .jpg, but am going sell the prints I have made from them. Still, the choice of digital is one that brings along it's own set of advantages and disadvantages.

One of the things I enjoy most about the digital creation of art is the flexibility it allows me. In much less time than it would take me to do the same with a physical work, I can copy something at any stage and go different directions with it. It lowers the threshold of exploration for me. I can change parts of it easily (as simple as turning layers on or off), I can change colors easily, and I can resize things easily. Working with vector images, as I prefer to, scaling does not mean I lose detail, and in fact sometimes it's advantageous for me to make a small detail in a larger scale and size it down to fit with the rest of what I have. Digital work seems to fit the way I think, and provides me with instant gratification.

Working with a physical medium such as acrylic paint allows me far less immediate flexibility (though the fast drying times do make for less demand on my patience), but it does force me, at times, to commit to a direction rather than too-quickly go elsewhere with it. That can lead to discovery, too. It is discovery that takes me longer, in general, but it tends to take me in different directions than working on my screen does.

Painting with acrylics takes me far longer. I know this, because one of the images I've created digitally is based off the same concept I initially made in acrylic. The painting took far longer, and has me far less satisfied with the quality of the result. (Clean brush, clean medium, clean water, and yet small dusty things get in my gloss coating as if magnetically drawn to it from across the room.) The painting feels weightier, because it is, and the finish and feel of it is different (though the colors are, too); the shine, the strokes, the more immediate link to the act of creation that the result has: these make a painting have a presence that is different than that of a digital print.

Of course, now I am (still!) dealing with the color management issues that working digitally brings with it. When I'm working, the colors are seen in the context of my room, on my monitor, in the medium of light. The finished product isn't light on a monitor, but ink on paper, and matching those together is a profession on its own. Calibrating my monitor so I can print things out correctly is taking up no small amount of resources, and while I hope that once I've come to a result that I'm happy with the greatest part of the work will be done, it is apparently a task that does have to be done again and again over the life of a monitor.

Those are just some of the issues with the creation of a piece. There is more that comes into play when you think about stepping into the world of selling a digital print. I'll write about that, soon!

Setting up Shop

Hopefully, I'll have an online shop set up in about a month! I'm planning to start selling digital art prints (professionally giclée printed) on etsy, on online place where people buy and sell handmade items from art to fashion.

The thing that's key right now is getting my prints to a level of quality I'm satisfied with . I've had one proof already printed up, and discovered that my attempt at calibrating my monitor properly was apparently insufficient! Now I've been fiddling around with it fussily to try and get it just right, and am having another proof printed. I hope it won't come to me having to buy some fancy device that will tell me exactly how off a color on my screen is from what it should be, but if that's what it takes, I may have to invest in one.

I am, luckily, very pleased with the quality of the Somerset Velvet paper that my printer offers. It has a nice weight, a gorgeous texture, and the colors -- even if not quite right -- are smooth and rich. No dotty home printer images, but true professional quality, including the archival nature of the inks and paper. Of course, all of this means that a single print costs a decent bit just to have made, but I think quality sells, and beyond that, I don't plan on offering anything of a quality I would hesitate to buy, myself.

I'll have to see if I can find an example of the color difference I was ending up with in my prints; I'll be sure to post those up!