For some, digital printing conjures up an image of just hitting a button to send a file to print and voilà it’s done!
It’s not quite as simple as that, not if you want to get it right.
In the lead up to printing the final digital prints featured in Collected Patterns: The botany of Walter Hill, there was a little bit of leg-work and a lot of decision-making.
Once I completed my designs, I got samples printed on the actual paper used for the final works. Early on in the project, the digital prints were going to be in colour, so the lovely Martin Barry at Brisbane Digital Images printed some Pantone test sheets I had created in Illustrator. Printed on the 100% cotton rag stock for the final works, I was armed with an accurate colour chart. I took the opportunity to also print samples of the line weights used in the artwork to see how fine we could push the detail in the images before losing clarity in the prints.
Then, once I decided the work would be in black and white, Martin printed cropped areas of each of the 6 designs at 100% scale to confirm the linework detail. Now we can say voilà!
If you’re serious about good quality art prints, visit Brisbane Digital Images.
Meanwhile, come and check out the exhibition. Myrtle Street Studio is open today from 12noon to 6pm, so drop in and let me show you around!
