art terms

GICLEE: (pronounced "zhee-clay") is a French word meaning "a spraying of ink". With the advent of giclée, the art of reproducing fine art has become even more precise. Essentially, this is a printmaking method using an ink-jet printer for photographic images of paintings to produce high-quality reproductions; also written giclee. In giclee, the ink is sprayed on to your choice of media in millions of colors utilizing continuous tone technology, retaining all the fine detail of the original.

ARTIST'S PROOF: common practice is that the first 10 percent of an edition is reserved for the artist. These proofs are identical to impressions in the edition in most instances. Print Marking example; A/P "1/35" is the first print of an edition of 35 Artist Proof impressions.

LITHOGRAPH: A printing process in which the image to be printed is rendered on a flat surface, as on sheet zinc or aluminum, and treated to retain ink while the nonimage areas are treated to repel ink. SERIGRAPH: Printers create a "serigraph" (sometimes called a "silkscreen") by using an exacting printmaking technique in which they push paint through a fine screen--usually made of silk or nylon--onto the canvas or fine art paper. The printer uses a different screen for each color in the print. The result is a richly, deeply colored artwork that has many of the qualities of a fine-art painting.

LIMITED EDITION(L/E): A fixed number of identical prints of an image, signed by the artist, sequentially numbered, and showing both the print's number and the total edition size. Each print is referred to as a "limited edition print."