Catalogue - Limited Edition Prints
This is a new service offered to increase the accessibility to Julie's work. Each edition is limited to 50 or 100 giclée prints on canvas, and each print is signed and numbered by the artist. The prints are not framed, but we can frame for a fee upon request. Currently available editions are shown below. Limited editions of a number of other paintings can be made upon request (conditions apply). Contact Alex or Julie if you wish to propose a new edition. For technical reasons we can only offer this service for paintings up to 18"x24" in size. Once we are confident we can guarantee the same high quality for larger prints, we will extend this service to larger paintings.
What are Limited Edition Prints?
Prices do not include shipping, etc. Contact Alex or Julie for details.
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Butterfly Morpho cypris Year of original: 2010 Price per print: $100 (unframed), $125 (framed) |
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Landscape Year of original: 2007 Price per print: $200 (unframed), $250 (framed) |
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Circular 7 Year of original: 2007 Price per print: $180 (unframed) |
What are Limited Edition Prints?
Limited edition prints are a limited set of high quality reproductions of a work of art on an archival quality medium, signed and numbered by the artist. For a reproduction to be a limited edition print (as opposed to a poster, for instance), several conditions must be met:
- All the steps in the production of the print must be supervised and approved by the artist.
- The print must be made with a high quality printing technique on an archival grade medium.
Examples of printing techniques are:
- Lithographic prints: a traditional printmaking technique.
- Offset prints: an automated variant of the lithographic print used for large editions.
- Giclée prints (see below): a digital technique currently replacing lithographic prints as the standard technique.
- The print must be numbered (e.g., 23/100 for the 23rd print of an edition of 100) and signed by the artist.
- The print must be accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, outlining all the details, including the size of the edition (i.e., the number of prints).
- The number of reproductions of a work that match the above four criteria must not exceed the size of the edition. If the print says xx/100 then 100 prints are all that are ever going to be made. Some exceptions apply, but are only acceptable when they are detailed in the certificate of authenticity These exceptions are:
- It is standard that the artist keeps an additional 10 % (or less) of the edition as Artist's Proofs. Hence, an edition of 100 will have 100 regular prints and up to 10 Artist's Proofs ("AP").
- An artist may keep a small number of prints for non-commercial purposes, like personal gifts. They must be labeled as such ("HC" or "Hors commerce")
- Some artists offer two or more editions of the same work, e.g., a small edition of giclées on canvas and a larger edition of offsets on paper. For this to be a bona fide practice, the certificate of authenticity of the giclée print must mention the offset edition and vice versa.
- Reproductions of substanitally lower quality without number or signature (posters, T-shirts, etc.) are always allowed at the artist's discretion, and do not have to be mentioned on the certificate of authenticity (although it is good practice to mention the possibility). They have no intrinsic value of their own, but function as promotional material for the real prints, and may increase their value.
What are Giclée Prints?
Giclée prints are digital prints made with a professional, high resolution inkjet printer. There are a number of differences between a giclée and a print from a regular deskjet printer:
- A regular deskjet uses three colours, plus black to produce the image. A giclée is made with up to twelve colours.
- Regular inkjet printers use dye-based inks, whereas giclées are made with pigment-based inks that show much better fading resistance.
- Regular prints are ruined when they come into contact with water. Giclées are coated to protect them from water and ultraviolet light.
- Regular prints on office paper start fading after a few months, whereas giclées are made on archive quality paper or canvas, and do not fade for 50-300 years, depending on the manufacturer of the ink, the printer, the medium, and the coating.
Unlike hand drawn prints, a giclée edition is not limited by the nature of the printing process. The image exists in digital format, and can be reproduced indefinitely. Two things limit the number of prints made: the integrity of the artist, and the legally binding nature of a signed certificate of authenticity. By limiting an edition, artists promise that their prints will keep their value as collector's items. If the artist breaks that promise, they break the trust of their customers, and risk losing their reputation and being sued.
Sometimes limited edition prints are described as "original prints". This confusing terminology should be avoided unless the print is the work of art (e.g., a Dürer woodcut).
What are Julie's Prints?
Julie's prints are limited edition giclée prints on canvas. They are limited to 100 prints and 10 Artist's Proofs. What follows is a brief description of the production process.
The original painting is photographed with a digital camera. The digital image is then processed with a professional photo editor to remove lens distortions, improve the colour balance, etc. When the digital image is approved by the artist, a trial print is made. If the trial print does not meet the approval of the artist, the digital image is re-edited (or a new photograph is taken and edited), and offered for approval. A new trial print is made, and the process repeats itself until a trial print is approved. Discarded trial prints are not part of the limited edition (as they do not meet condition 1 listed under What is a Limited Edition Print), and may be recycled as multimedia projects. The prints that do meet approval of the artist are numbered and signed by hand by the artist, and sprayed with an acrylic coat protecting the print against moisture and ultraviolet light. Each print comes with a certificate of authenticity dated and signed by the artist.
While care has been taken to optimize durability and fading resistance of the prints, giclées should be treated with the same care as original paintings. This means that exposure to sources of ultraviolet light including direct sunlight should be avoided, as well as air pollutants, smoke, excessive moisture, etc.
(c) 2010 Julie Denoncourt --- www.juliedenoncourt.com