Home

Papers and canvas for fine art printing

During the five years that we have been seriously involved in making giclée prints we have tried many kinds of fine art paper, but chosen just a few of them to use. We have also been through generations of printing machines. In five years things have improved almost beyond belief.

By chance, when we began dealing with a new paper supplier, we discovered Wayne from FineArtFoto, and through him a company called Innova Art that distributes an entire range of very high-quality papers and canvasses.

We are rapidly establishing ourselves as the best giclée printers in the business - and so we must have the best materials to work with. Wayne and FineArtFoto not only provide those with incredible efficiency, but also allow us to feed back information to manufacturers in order to improve the products. For us to be the best we must be working with the best.... When Wayne says "you could do even better" we take serious note!

Innova have even developed a series of what they call ”Book Art” papers by working with artists, photographers, book artists and academics, that are ideal for creating books.

“Book Art” papers are designed for the very specific requirements of digital book art and binding. The coated papers have a robust, scuff resistant smooth or textured surface and have a consistent grain direction marked on the packaging to cut down on paper wastage. “No longer will bookmakers have to purchase oversize sheets, determine the grain direction and then cut sheets to the proper sizes,” says Wayne Connelly of Innova Art. Grain direction is essential in book paper when folding, as the long grain needs to run parallel to the spine of the book. Each sheet has also been made with a consistent profile across the surface area to eliminate paper curl issues and allow the pages of the book to remain flat. The papers are made on a twin wire Fourdrinier paper machine, which produce a near exact surface match on both sides of the paper, making the look of the book the same throughout when printing on both sides. As with all the papers, they give excellent image quality and colour gamut, are acid and lignin free and compatible with dye and pigment inks.

They also won a 2006 TIPA Award for Best Independent Inkjet Paper: Innova Art FibaPrint Gloss.

While inkjet colour photo printing has reached or even surpassed the quality of traditional silver halide photo prints in the last few years, black & white inkjet photo printing remained a challenge. Fibrebased silver halide B&W prints are still considered to be superior in quality by many, but this may change with the introduction of Innova Art FibaGloss paper. When used with the latest matt black pigment inks, this paper shows an incredibly high DMax of 2.7; greater than traditional fibre-based silver halide papers. This allows for extremely smooth tonal gradations and deep, rich shadows full of detail. There is much more, but this will give you some idea.

So their paper is wonderful, but what we find even more compelling is that Innova Art is clearly philosophically committed to the idea of encouraging people to think of giclée printing as an art form in its own right. On the first page of their website www.innovaart.com there is a section entitled “What is art?” which contains an article discussing the place of digital art in the artistic tradition. In the case of digital art they say:

Art is a process of creation based on understanding the relationship among color, subject, line and medium. The way it is created is secondary to the process of creation. Whether art is printed with a brush, chipped out with a hammer, shot with a camera, or printed with a computer printer is secondary to the creation of the image. The role of the artist is to push the boundaries of art. Art is meant to challenge, expand and push the boundaries. Is digital art “art”? Yes. And artists will continue to further push the boundaries of art by moving the images beyond paper and canvas onto fabrics, floors, and walls with digital printing. Today art can become part of our environment and the clothing we wear. Technology will continue to develop and we cannot judge the integrity by the tools used in the creation process.

This is followed by a list of artists who use digital art:

o Robert Raushenberg
o Jim Dine
o David Hockney
o Andrew and Jamie Wyeth
o David Shepperd

Innova Art is based in London. We can add just a few Scottish West Coast artists (all of whom we work with) to their list to make it even more impressive:

o George Wyllie
o Norman Edgar
o Ronnie Ford
o Joe McLaughlin
o Andrew Fitzpatrick
o Frank Docherty
o Don McNeil
o Jean Bell
o Paul Murray

and, we have one from London, as well:

o Leo Stevenson

As it happens, we agree with Innova Art, as you can see from our article “Some Thoughts on AGKC, Giclée Printers Par Excellence, the Connection between the Printer and the Artist in Giclée Printing, and Other Things” in the section “Giclée printing” on our front page.

Innova Art is committed to getting feedback about their paper from artists and has even devoted a section of their website to showcasing the work of a number of artists who have gone into digital print. We think we could all benefit if they also got feedback about their paper from printers, and are currently in discussion with them about ways of doing that. This is very exciting, because it means expanding and pushing other boundaries, boundaries that normally function to reinforce divisions between paper manufacturers and printers.

It should be added that the kind of collaboration we are in the process of developing with Innova Art is very clearly transdisciplinarity in action. It has everything to do with making things whole, rather then keeping things fragmented. What we are doing obviously goes far beyond printing. Printing is how we make our living. Of course, one must do something to put bread on the table. Making a living is necessary to all of us. But, as they say, “man (sic) cannot live by bread alone,” and so at AGKC, we go far beyond just printing. This is why our brochure has the following written on the front: