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Printing and Self Mounting Fine Art Piece

As most of you know, I do both digital and and printed products for my clients and a huge advocate for that uh, digital is not archival, and I tell that to my clients all the time a digital file is a transitory thing it will not last, uh, print will and when you print in an archival professional way that will last a hundred years or more, where is a digital file? Especially? We don't get care of it, you'll be lucky if it lasts five to ten years and it's, there are researchers out there at universities trying to come up with a way that will keep elektronik format files archival this goes to with any document I mean, think about this we're in jeopardy of losing every document we have ever made right now in the course of histamine historical documents guidry of congress, things like that they're all done on paper and paper at least will last, but now cos corporation's books everything's done digitally and there is no way to preserve things archival e digitally so little left and that's li...

ke the big thing that researchers are trying to figure out now and our clients don't realise this I mean, we just all snap pictures with our iphones and our kids are growing up on hard drives and it's just a travesty, and so I know as a businesswomen and particularly with the target audience being of month new mothers between twenty and forty years old, they don't even know what a darkroom is, you know, they don't even know what film is and to them it's all digital and that's the product they want today's digital file is yesterday's eight by ten back in the day well, mirren film, everybody just wanted eight by tens. That was the big question when they called how it doesn't eight by ten nowadays it's, do you sell the files? So everybody wants the digital files and I know that that segment of age group of my market might our target demographic is a woman who grew up with digital files, that's what she makes, she expects that and by golly, if I don't provide it she's going to find it somewhere else. So I know as a as a businesswoman that I need to provide that product that my clients are demanding. However, I can provide it on my terms, and I can provide it at a profitable rate, which is the big thing we're trying to educate young photographers on this today, but I still believe as an artist that there's nothing like seeing your work print it and let me tell you, when a thirty by forty canvas comes off the printer and it's your work it makes your heart sing, I mean, just so already, you know, it just makes everything feel better and you put it on the wall it's like, has that magnificent wow feeling and your clients feel it too, when it's their children. So I have even gone so far is starting to pre print things and put them on the wall is a sample from my client before she comes in for ordering appointment to show her what something printed in our space looks like and they don't always buy it. The last client who came in didn't, but she spent three grand sure, no problem. She understood it made her realize what the printed product with the value in that wass okay, so we're going to talk today about presenting your image is in their best light, okay? You don't I mean, I printed my studio, you don't have to do that, and this whole segment is based on the fact that you probably won't be able to do that. Okay, I want you to be able to print at a lab outsource set out like you've always been doing, but do it in a little bit of a different way, and then when it comes back to you, have fun with it, arts and crafty and present it even better with your own artistic techniques. Okay, so let's get talking about what you're gonna learn in the segment we're going to talk about printing on water color and canvas for artistic impact we're going to talk about matt cutter's what you need to cut mats okay where to find matt board that's the big question color matching your image to the matte board okay it's an art form to take the printed image and then figure out what mattes combined for it and a lot of clients will ask me they'll say well I wanted to match my home well a framer of very talented framer once told me you match the mats and the frame to the image not the place it's going to go and I kind of went okay but what if you want to put an image in a space that you know and I thought well, that means that I need to shoot my images for the space they're going in so they matched the space they're going in and then when we frame the image it will match the image and everything will seamlessly go together I can think I can see that you're all sitting here going wow, I better think about what I'm doing before I do it yes but when you do that and you ask your client where the image is going to go so you know how to photograph it that helps them emotionally invest in the process it helps them commit to a product before they've purchased it, so you know you're going to have a good sale on the back end it makes the product fit the space so it looks custom and when you frame it that way all of a sudden it elevates your work to a level other photographers are not pursuing it's all coming together okay, so color matching your image, matt mount wise but also to the home where the space is going it's very important, declan a print edge what is declan means we're going to rip this print apart right now it's a matter of fact, you can but since I'm doing like you not here and it's really fun the first time you do it you're shaking like a leaf, okay? But you can always re print eventually you'll get it in one try watch I won't get it in one try, but eventually you will get it in one try as you do it more and more and different papers have different fields when you tear them and there's also an easy side alongside a difficult side, you'll feel the difference when you start to do it okay painting a deck will print edge often times on a dark image like this one it's on white paper when I tear the edges conceals white line around there, it's very distracting so taking gorgeous metallic paints, craft paint and painting the edge of that paper adds a luminescence to the image and elevates it again to an art form. Okay, we're going to talk about float mounting techniques I love to separate my image from the page and give it a three dimensional field and perfect all shot linda's he went by bringing that dekel watercolor printout to me, I'll show folks what I mean, this is basically what we're going to be producing today it's float mounted, separated from the page by about a quarter of an inch, too, given a three dimensional feel, the edge has been tourney and painted to once again taken image that if you do it digitally it's just a digital image the minute you printed on a rich paper that soaks in the tones and start giving it a sculptural look, it makes what was just a kn image into an art piece, so I'm a huge advocate of doing this and printing, and we sell these to our clients is one of our high end products in our studio. It takes some labour in some time and it's framed and ready to go with last when we're done and that you know, these sell for seven hundred dollars one piece franked, which is actually pretty reasonable um, when it includes frame and museum glass so but they're really fun to do so that's what we're basically gonna be doing today, linda, let you take this so my I want I want to show you the finished product before we actually get going on it, so you can see where the goal is. But that's, what float mounting means to ski just to mount something separated from the map board to give it that sculptural field. And of course, we're going to talk about all the supplies you need. So if you are printing at home or if you want to know what to order from your lab for this kind of thing, I use lexa instant dry satin canvas. I also use epps and canvas okay, absent is a marvelous company, they have beautiful paper, so does lex's jet. There are some competition awards through lecture yet, so if you print on lex's jet paper, you can win ipads and five hundred dollars gift certificates and stuff like that. So for competition, I will tend to print election if I win. I win something cool this last year I won the lecture that award for the western district state, and I didn't print it on lex's jet and I so I still got a gift card, but I didn't win the ipad mini was something more like my only friend in on so now for competition I print for the awards I want to win so when I went to make sure you get the award right so you've got to make sure you're eligible that's why I print on lectured a lot for that but absent campus and ebsen fine art velvet paper I use a lot for client work okay fullfill from your lab with no mountains so this is what you're going to order through your lab they're going to order velvet fine art paper or water color it will say something like that at the lab and you want to order it you know like this so that it has on you want to put a small image on a large canvas and tell them not to cut it okay, so you just wanted to end up like this because if you're gonna dekel or tear the edge he needs some space to be ableto hang onto the paper to do it so you want to put an image with a lot of room around it and just order this no mounting just paper from your laugh okay? A watercolor sheet like this I think will cost you about thirty or forty dollars to have printed okay, so yes it's scary at first when you're first doing this and you may screw up a couple times what I highly recommend is if your practice duckling first and even if you just have a home printer print an image out doesn't matter what it is and it doesn't matter if the colors right just printed on your home printer and using like you could buy absent fine art velvet paper through epson or any resource online and you can practice duckling the edge on eleven by seventeen sheet like this through absent cost about five bucks so practice deck ling first on just paper that you buy that way you're not wasting forty dollars with a client print if you can't print yourself you know you don't have toe order another forty dollars print because you screwed up the duckling okay I screwed up many before got it right so you will you will get shy at first but if it's on a practice piece of paper it won't feel so when you make mistake eso for watercolor paper I used let's lex jets sunset rag and absent finer velvet okay I've also used honda really torch on paper and hung really german xing which is what this is printed on I ran out of my absent paper and unfortunately couldn't order enough in time so I printed on the hand muley paper just to give you a different idea of what different papers look like some papers are extremely textured like you're there there this is a match paper met it's not there's no glass there's no sheen to it and you'll find that some papers have very strong texture to them and some images like the torch on paper has an incredibly good texture and so does the the finer velvet isn't quite a textured but it still has if you've gone to an art store and bought a pad of watercolor paper you know it was bumpy that's what it feels like so different papers have different textures I strongly encourage you like if you love absent paper you can order a sample or like if you go to one of the trade shows you can pick up the little sample packs of paper and that will give you the feel and the thickness different papers have different thicknesses I have noticed the thicker the paper the harder it is to dekel so it's not impossible but if it's a thicker paper it's a little harder to get a hold of and the rip is maura I mean imagine if it's a really thick paper it's gonna be a little more challenging to rip okay, so those are kind of the fine art velvet papers and then canvas I have my canvas in here. I think I did. This is a canvas print that I just printed on my home printer my epson and this is the lexx jet sunset rag excuse me this is election instant dry satin canvas that we I used at the studio for like marketing projects like the entire hospital display we have about almost seventy forty inch campuses in our hospital, and they were all printed on this, and then we hand wrapped them around stretcher frame at the studio so and granted, I I only do hand stretching myself for marketing projects. I don't do that for a client because I don't coat I can, I can oh coat a small thing with spray fixative or spray gloss, but I don't do large pieces because we don't have a dust free environment to do that in and it's you, you really need incredible spraying power to do a large canvas. So for clients, I order those through my lab. Whitehouse cut some color, but for marketing projects, we just do it without the coating on it stretching around. We know we're gonna be replacing them every few years, so they don't need to be archival. Okay, so mainly our printer at work is used for doing smaller client work, which we then spray on a smaller scale and then it's also used for large scale marketing projects, but we're not doing it archival e for marketing project because we know we're going to be setting the stuff out, but you know I can print and gallery wrap a forty inch canvas at my studio for fifty dollars the lab it's going to cost me two hundred to two hundred fifty per canvas so it makes great sense marketing wise especially you're going to be doing a lot of displays to invest in learning how to print okay and like I said I'll show you my printer here might my beast you call him so anyway this is him right here harold the beast the frog in my camera is also named harold he goes back to kermit teo I call him kermit sometimes as well but it's an absent ninety eight hundreds of forty four inch model on dh that's a forty inch campus coming off of it I think that we did for the hospital I bought this printer used from a wonderful man in santa cruz and drove it from santa cruz to get santa cruz california to my home and ben or it was a nine hour drive and I got a ticket the last twenty miles coming home of course murphy's law was going seventy nine fifty five okay anyway I had to put that they're very large I mean, this thing weighs one hundred hundred fifty pounds it's huge and getting it up the stairs into our studio was a nightmare but I've had it now for two and a half years belinda do you remember it was I think it's been two and a half years now yeah and it's a fabulous it's a workhorse I mean it's just wants to print its nothing can print all day long and it's just it sounds like a little jet engine rumbling in our studio on dh I'm in love with it I use image print rip software by color, right? It is a software program that allows you to print it takes over the functions of the absent print driver. There is nothing wrong with the ups in print driver, but for me, since I wasn't technically proficient in really high school printing, I and I needed teo get it done right away like I didn't have time to learn it. The image print I c c profiles were super accurate and it was very I don't have any test prints. I just have to say I'm using this paper do some soft proofing and photo shop and say print and it prints out a perfect print every time like I don't need to do tests troops to see if the colors correct or anything like that, which makes it much easier and faster to produce prints, and since I started that way, I've just kind of stayed that way, so I need to learn how to use the eppes and robert you betcha, I need to do that. I just haven't got gotten around and image print makes it so easy, but image for is an investment I mean, I think I paid about nineteen hundred dollars for the printer used they normally run six or seven thousand new and the image print software for this size printer was twenty five hundred dollars so it's quite an investment okay, this is not for everyone so that's why I'm saying you don't need teo get a printer you could do this by ordering these prints through your lab and then doing the artwork on them and your own studio okay? And that's what I'm going to focus on today but I did want to tell you what I do do and I'm actually but I have to say I love this thing I was very hesitant toe by it and george not not criticism george but george he lives in alabama he's a printer very kind man whom I met in one of michelle heather michelle's painting classes he's a printer and a genius that printing and he said go big or go home because you will be miserable if you buy a small printer because you will limit you and then you're gonna be upset so he said if you've got the space, just go for it get the large printer and he was so right because now I can't live without my forty four inch printer and I'm actually about to upgrade to the ninety nine hundred so that's how much I care about this I had seventy campuses to do for the hospital yes it costs me about ten thousand dollars to do because I had to buy the printer by the ink by the canvas learned how to structure bar rap by the software, but it would have cost me that same amount had I done it through the lab. But now I have a printer. I have the skills I have this new thing I'm doing in my studio and I could do any marketing project I want if somebody comes and wants me to display somewhere, you betcha. In a few days, we can have canvases done wrapped and installed quickly, easily and inexpensively. So the initial investment yes is a lot, but to me, it was it was well worth it. So I had to I had to tell you guys that just to share my experience with it and where I hope you will grow to and become his passion about printing as I am okay, tools of the trade supplies and where to find them. Okay, what do you need for cutting mats? Well, you need matt cutter, but you could do it on a budget. Okay, you don't need to get an expensive matt cutter. There are matt cutter's that are full on computerized things that just, like do it, I mean it's insane. You, khun spend ten grand on a mat cutter if you want to no, I'm talking about a simple little less than a hundred dollars matt cutter you can buy at your local craft store. I think I paid eighty nine dollars for this one, and I use it all the time. Okay? I'm not doing this every day like the frame shops are they need that laser cutter, you know, automated, computer generated thing. I don't, I don't need that. Okay, so and I could be just as accurate and beautiful with this as they can with a laser cut, matt actually, even better. Sometimes I think because sometimes a laser cut, matt, it'll like when you cut the corner, you'll see a little slip, like a tiny little cuts on the on the corner that you'll see that if you're looking at faraway, you don't see it. But, boy, when you go in close, you can it's the telltale sign that it's been cut by a computer by a laser cutter instead of by hand, so sometimes hand can actually be more accurate. Okay? It comes with an angle blade and a straight blade, so I'm going to show you guys how to how to do all this, but you just put it on the mountain cutter, and this is a straight late, so I'll just make a straight cut for your mat board, and then this one is set at a forty five when you push the the blade down it comes out at a forty five degree angle which is what makes your pretty matt cut for the opening of your hole. Okay, okay, so then matte board really? I know this is I have to speak to what you can get in the u s so I apologize for those of you who are worldwide but there are plenty of online resource is to find matt board I get mine through larson jule arson julhas my framing company you do have to have a retail location in order work with larsen jule, but there's plenty of other places to get matt board and let me tell you when I'm in a pickle when I'm in a fix and I need matt board quick, I can't wait for it, I just go down to my local hobby lobby or michaels and their frame shop always has matt board for projects and they'll sell it to you by the sheet so you could get a huge sheet for, like, fourteen dollars and that will make you know for sixteen by twenty max okay, so it really just depends on how big your supposed you want to go. I don't usually matt anything larger than twenty by twenty for when you get too big, it starts to get really cumbersome on by you know this cutter can only handle so large, okay so what do you need for deck ling the edges of your paper well, you need a deck ling ruler and there's a couple of different options depending on the look that you want um there is specific deck old edges so they have these wavy lines in here and you put it against the paper and basically ripped like that I don't actually use this it's awkward and a bit challenging teo navigate and the edge sometimes doesn't it look as organic as I want it looks manufactured it looks like it was done with a crooked edge ruler I mean, it doesn't look natural if that makes sense and I really want things to be natural this ruler I got from stretcher bar depot dot com it's just a big fat heavy ruler straight edge the heavier the better and helps you with your deck link so you wanted to have some some substance to it so when you put it down on the paper and help support anchor your paper down so you can rip easily but I just use a straight edge and to me that that comes out a little prettier a little less obvious that you deck hold it and I want the artwork to stand out not necessarily the decorating that I did okay but this is ten dollars from structure bar depot and you could find these all over the place it's just a forty eight inch ruler that's got some some weight to it okay so what do you need for painting paper edges okay you need toll paints so if you go to a craft store you confined these archival toll paint thes people use these to paint like wood boxes it's a craft thing and they come in these metallic colors and I always buy the metallic you don't have to but metallic has a little sheen to it and to me they they offer ah little bit of oomph in luminescence to your images that I I really like and having tested out quite a few I have almost every neutral color they make in these as you all know I'm a neutral queen so now you can there's several different companies that produce these s so you'll have to look around at your craft store to find out and test different ones but these air super cheap they're like two or three dollars a bottle it's not it's not expensive you also need to get a flat edged brush it's called up right okay you want a synthetic brush you don't want to get something that has natural fibres in it the synthetic just seems toe work a little nicer is just easier to flow along the edge but the bright meaning the squared off ej is really going to help you keep your line specific and not intrude on your image when you're painting the outside edge okay what else do you want? So those air just these air just manufacturers that manufacture this type of paint martha stewart has a couple of these plaid full cart paints which is this one here and delta paints is auction also really popular craft painting company most crafters know these paints left and right I mean, I've seen women with like every color of the rainbow in their space so for float mounting what do you need? This image is just the deck old edge you know, I just took a macro shot of it I have put philip, have you guys ever seen a philip inside a map? I have done that before but I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner you do need to order your fill it a specific size and you have to cut it on the day my husband did it all for me and then we had to glue it in there and it was pretty challenging I mean, I do it occasionally, but if you really want to do that I would suggest leaving that to the professionals but it is fun to experiment around with but what we're going to work with today is equally as beautiful and easy to do that any one of you khun khun do at your age your studio's okay, so you need quarter inch foam core which is this stuff here I get mine from pacific mt it's just phone board it's you matt you can mount your prints on this from the from the lab if you want and I get the kind that has a sticky side so the, uh the always forget which side of the sticky side so you can peel off the late like it's got stickiness on one side I always get that kind you don't have to because I'm going to show you archival glues if you can use but you just need sixteen by twenty sheets of this because we're going to be cutting out the inside of it and using s so that we can float the mat off of it but then we're going to be using the inside piece toe actually float the print off of that as well okay, you need ah good blocks knife cutter okay some kind of blade that's really sharp. Be careful with it obviously you also need a palette knife at least this is what I use and you need these are the gels remember these I painted with these in the last class this is basically archival glue guys that's all it is it dries clear so it's this is the regular gel from golden I like the golden brand heather introduced it to me and it's pretty good there's plenty of other manufacturers who make this stuff but basically all it is is thick white glue you can paint on top of your campuses with this to create a texture and your images and I did that in the last creative live class we did on newborns eyes matter fact linda if you wouldn't mind bringing out that print for me the larger one the painting I'll show you guys how those gels work but they have dual purpose which is kind of nice they can be an artistic medium but they also service as basically archival glue so this is a painting that I did that sits in my studio and this might be hard for the online audience to see but there is acrylic paint over the top of this as well as that gel has been painted on top of the canvas very sickly along the lines of the painting itself to create a textured look it looks like an oil painting when you come up here and touch it it's very I lead it forward like that so the light doesn't get on it yeah you know thank you for telling me that so you can see some of the raised texture and the gloomy it's just clear glue that dried on the top of the canvas that's all it is it's archival glue and you khun it's meant to be a mixing medium for acrylics that you can stick it up your acrylics with and give them texture that's what it's meant for I paint with them clear so they offer my canvases that I've came in for my clients a little bit of that fine art sculptural three dimensional field again just elevating your work to find our instead of just a printed digital product. Okay, okay, linda, I'll let you take this again. Heavy. You will need some spray mount of pieces when you're mounting thes prints. You don't want to use the gel under them. He only want to use this for your for your phone core mount board because this will, if you like, put it, apply it too thick underneath it all like you'll see it. So you want to use spray mount when you're actually sticking the print to the foam core? Because he's it here's a lot smoother. Okay, okay. And of course, you'll need your mat cutter for that as well. So other supplies we'll need before we get started here, you want a flat working surface? You want some water, paper towels you want? Sometimes you'll need masking tape being a well ventilated area. Some of this stuff really reeks, so just keep that in mind. I don't use anything that's really toxic, but just keep in mind. You want to be aware of that, and then you want a lot of daylight balanced light, okay, so you can see see what you're doing