Fine ART
Fine ART Print
About
The difference between a classic print and a Fine Art print is really great, as to make the Fine Art printer a prestigious professional figure, both in the field of photography and illustration.
Illustrations are mainly created for publishing (books, advertising), but illustrations are also Art, to be collected and - why not ? - to hang: for this reason fine art prints are a gift that comes to us from the technology and the skill of printers!
For digital illustrators Fine ART printing is in fact the only way to print their work.
For illustrators who work with paper, brushes and colors Fine ART printing has become a way to reproduce unique (original) works and make them available for more people, at a lower cost than the original work.
Many parameters create the gap between a simple print and a fine art print.
First of all, the image scan must be performed with professional scanner.
Then, the image is processed in order to ensure, during the printing phase, the perfect chromatic correspondence and sharpness of the original.
Printing must be performed with a professional printer, with very high quality inks in order to respect the entire color range, contrast and delicacy of the original illustration.
The paper, another brick of this construction called Fine Art, must be chosen with extreme care: it must guarantee a series of qualitative and durability specifications, it must be able to give back to the eyes and to the touch the feeling of holding the original work in your fingers.
My Fine ART
My Fine Art Prints are in limited edition (150), numbered and signed. To make each piece unique, I create a detail with Gold or Silver leaf or Gouache on each print. Above all my illustration can be transformed in Fine Art Print (except for portraits).
The print is made on cotton paper (HAHNEMUHLE Photo Rag Bright White 308 gr/sqm). Size available: 20x20 / 25x25 / 30x30 . On request they can be printed in different size.
Gold and Silver leaf
History
In ancient Egypt, the gold leaf was included in the number of colors and its precious glow reminds us Byzantine works. There are hints in the text by Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia, XXXIII), in the Book of Art by Cennino Cennini, in which the materials and methods are indicated, in the treatise De pictura by Leon Battista Alberti.
Filippo Baldinucci, in the Tuscan Vocabulary of the Art of Drawing, defines gold leaf as follows:
“ Twenty-four carat gold, beaten so subtly and reduced to broad leaves an eighth of an arm in each direction, it does not reach more than six scudi for every thousand leaves, including the work of the manufacturer. This is what architects use, to gild attics, and every other ornament of factories, paintings and furnishings. It is still used by painters to gild, with mordant and harmony, things that need to be painted, over gilding, coramus and more. Silver is still reduced to this form of leaf, and it is used to silver, or to put under those colors as a background, because they have no body, transpire, and the color with them silver is said to veil. That craftsman, who reduces both gold and silver to leaf, is called Goldbeat (Goldbeat), and the other who uses it to gild and silver is called Mettiloro (Goldput)
Today this technique is used for jewel frames or by painters to embellish details, applying the gold / silver leaf with the Gouache (or Bolo) or Mordente (or Mission) technique.
My History
On my illustrations I apply the Gold / Silver leaf with the ancient mission technique. The slow process, learned thanks to the precious teachings of a friend, artist and restorer of wooden works, takes place through the application of a veil of water gilding mission, on which the leaf is gently laid and made to adhere.
On the original works, only on request (given the high cost), I use 22/23 kt Gold (the noble metal), and pure Silver. Both are presented in sheets collected in booklets.
In the Fine ART works I use imitation gold and silver leaf, (once it was called “Oro matto” (Crazy Gold) , to describe something that Gold was not) to embellish some details. The application technique is the same, requiring precision and slowness.