Harnessing Digital Art Media

Harnessing DIGITAL ART MEDIA by Jeremy Sutton
Challenges, Choices and Opportunities

Artists today have use of a new generation of powerful digital tools that have opened up new vistas of possibilities. Digital prints are now in the collections of prestigious museums, art galleries and private collectors throughout the world. More professional photographers than ever are crossing the boundary between creating pure photographic prints and making fine art images, where the original photograph serves only as a launching point for artistic interpretation rather than an end product in itself. Using digital tools in creating fine art raises a host of questions: How do you describe your artwork? How do you value your work? How do you address issues of originality and longevity? This article examines the challenges, choices and opportunities for the artist today, sharing the perspectives of art collectors, gallery owners, art critics, artists and fine art printers.

Throughout history artists have used and experimented with the latest tools, technology and media. They often met resistance and skepticism from a public that tends to resist change. Much of the art media we take for granted today, such as canvas, photography and acrylic paints, were revolutionary when first introduced. “Every tool has been new technology at some time,” says Donald Farnsworth, founder of Magnolia Editions, whose clients include renowned artist Chuck Close. “From the invention of handmade paper 2000 years ago to the invention of acrylic paint in the 1960s, there has always been new technology.”

I’m interested in content, not media,” explains Catharine Clark, ownerdirector of the Catharine Clark Gallery. “Good art is not about the medium; it’s about the idea.” The artists’ ideas drive the art, not their choice of tools, technology or media. For Clark, art is content-driven, not media-driven. Art collector Robert Pritikin echoes Clark’s sentiments when he expresses, “I couldn’t care less about digital media.” For Pritikin, the inherent value of an artwork is related to the subject matter and the historic nature of the artwork. Founder and director of Trillium Press, David Salgado, describes art as “the physical manifestation of philosophical ideas” and explains, “Art is not media specific, it is a process.”

“People at first didn’t realize the computer was a medium that allowed you to process ideas,” says Griff Williams, artist and owner of Gallery 16 and Urban Digital Color. “Originally, photographers used the medium to enlarge and create different substrates. It was used as a reproductive medium.” Gallery 16 works with artists to extend their studio practice by exploring new possibilities opened up by the digital printing medium.

Characteristics of the Digital Medium

“Every medium has a signature look,” Williams explains. “An intaglio print, such as an etching, has a characteristic look that is associated with that specific type of printing press technique. By contrast, the digital press can faithfully reproduce the look of graphite, layers of overlapping tissue paper, collage, silver-halide photographic prints, and so on. It acts like a funny hybrid or chameleon of a medium. That is the danger and the beauty. The danger is the implication that it’s something it isn’t. The beauty is that it is a remarkably eloquent tool for creating images on almost any absorbent surface, from matzah to silk.

“Historically in printmaking, restrictions were placed on size and substrate materials. Now, with the digital press, we can print on virtually anything at any scale, and we can control how the print is perceived, such as making it a sculptural element in an installation.”


George Krevsky, owner of the George Krevsky Gallery, tells the story of a collector wanting to purchase a digital photographic print. The artist of the desired work wanted the collector to have an original silver gelatin print. The collector came in and looked at the prints side-by-side and was unable to distinguish between the two. Krevsky explains, “This goes to show how the digital printing technology is now so advanced. It is difficult to differentiate digital photographic prints from the more traditional method of printing photographs.” While acknowledging its technical excellence, Krevsky is skeptical about the maturation of the digital medium. “The jury is still out on digital works. The nuances, where are they? Where is the depth? How will it hold up with time?”

San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker fears that “there’s too much freedom (in digital media) to give the right kind of friction to give artistic results. Art requires resistance to give results… Resistance is essential.” Artist Dawn Meson agrees with Baker in that the digital medium can make it harder for the artist to let accidents be, since “it is too tempting for many artists to correct and make perfect.”

Trillium Press’ Salgado sees the artist as a boxer wherein the medium (the “punch”), digital or otherwise, invites a reaction (the “counterpunch”) from the artist. An example of punch/counter-punch in digital media is the way artist Hung Liu used the water solubility of the Iris dye inks (“punch”) to create dripping effects (“counter-punch”) by running water down the prints. Farnsworth echoes Salgado’s sentiment by explaining, “Everything I’ve ever invented began with a mistake, and you only make mistakes by doing.” In other words, treat digital media like any other: Dive in, try things out, and react to what emerges. I encourage my students to take risks on the canvas, to be committed to their brush strokes and the creative process. Building up history on your canvas, embracing and working with serendipity and “mistakes,” whether working digitally or traditionally, is what brings your canvas to life and adds nuances and depth.

Words and Meaning

We are pioneers at the dawn of a new digital age where the earlier definitions of what constitutes fine art are transforming. New paradigms and vocabulary are needed.

The traditional distinctions between painters, sculptors and printmakers are breaking down. Clark explains that many of the artists she represents “describe themselves as working across media.” She recommends that everyone take the time to visit galleries and museums, to look at art, to see for themselves the mixing of media and how the content relates to the media.


Original Versus Reproduction

There is a vital distinction between original prints, where the print itself is the final artwork, and reproduction prints, where the original artwork exists in another medium. Clark emphasizes the importance of educating the public about the difference between original and reproduction prints. Gregory Lind, owner of the Gregory Lind Gallery, finds it troubling from the perspective of fine art when “instead of new media being used to create new art, technology is used to duplicate existing works.”

Top: Hung Liu with a series of original mixed-media artworks based on a common digital print
Middle: Gregory Lind with a Will Yackulic goache and ink on paper.
Bottom: Using a digital loom in Belgium, Magnolia Editions published a 15-foot-high tapestry of Chuck Close’s portrait of musician Philip Glass, seen here with Magnolia Editions founder, Donald Farnsworth.
“Giclée” comes from the French word for a spray or spurt of liquid. According to Williams, it was first introduced in the digital printing industry by Mac Holbert of Nash Editions in Los Angeles. At the time, Nash Editions were using early Iris printers with dye-based inks that were designed for proofing, not for longevity. Holbert apparently called their prints “Giclées” to fend off questions about longevity. Subsequently the term has come to refer generically to all types of inkjet printing. It is largely used today in reference to reproduction prints. There is some confusion in the marketplace due to the presence of “embellished Giclées” (reproduction prints that have some hand brush strokes added, not always added by the original artist). The intrinsic value of an original print is significantly more than that of a reproduction print, including embellished Giclées. The consensus of the people interviewed for this article is to avoid using the term “Giclée” to describe your original prints.

When a digital print is combined with non-digital media, we may ask ourselves, “How do we describe the end result?” Artist Liu goes beyond the print by building up layers of paint and resin and assemblage over the original print in order to create a solid structure that bridges printing, painting, collage making and sculpting. The artwork is not a painting or a print; it is not purely digital or traditional. It is an original one-of-a-kind artwork, and yet the source print for the image is reproducible.

Clark’s approach to describing artwork is to provide a literal and specific description of what makes up the artwork. If it is a digital print, she describes the type of print and what substrate it is printed on such as “pigment print on Rives BFK 100 percent rag cold-pressed watercolor paper.” A digital painting where traditional media has been applied to a digital print could be described as “mixed media.” Gallery 16 Editions describe their original prints as either “Iris prints” when created using the Iris printer, or as “pigment prints” when created using any of their pigment-ink-based inkjet printers.

I describe my paintings as “combined media on canvas.” They originate as paintings created in Corel Painter (sometimes based on photographic reference); they are printed out on canvas and then have various media, such as acrylic paint and pastel, applied on to the canvas surface. I avoid using the terms “digital art,” “computer art” and “computer-generated art,” all of which imply that artistic skill is secondary to the fact that the computer was used. After all you’d never describe a Van Gogh painting an example of “oil paint-generated art!”

Multiple Originals

“An artwork created with the use of digital media and which has the physical form of being a reproducible digital print,” Clark explains, is an example of what can be termed “multiple original.” That is, there is no other original artwork other than what is expressed on the digital print. The term multiple original is widely used in galleries and museums when referring to traditional fine art prints such as woodcuts, engravings and etchings, lithographs and screen-prints. In all these cases, there is a matrix or plate of some kind that the print is based on, but that matrix does not constitute the actual artwork. In the case of digital paintings the digital file is equivalent to the matrix or plate. The print is the artwork.


Above: Artist Hung Liu applying oil paint onto a resin-coated digital print at Trillium Press.

Multiple prints can be made from the matrix. Each print may vary slightly due to the way ink is applied (or rubbed off) or due to further working of the print surface with other media. Even with these unique aspects to each print, which make them each one-of-a-kind artworks, they are still linked to each other by coming from a common matrix, and are thus multiple originals.

Creating multiple originals carries the responsibility to track the edition in order to imbue them with value to collectors and clients. An edition may involve some artist proof prints and a limited number of actual artwork prints available for sale. Clark says she likes to keep the length of editions down to between three and seven in the total number of prints. Many artists choose to have larger editions. For artwork created with digital media choosing an edition length is the same decision that any printmaker faces. With a digital file and high-quality digital printer, an unlimited number of multiple prints can be made that are almost identical; with traditional prints, the matrix or plate eventually degrades, and that sets a natural physical limit to the length of an edition.

When hand artwork is applied individually to each print, the artwork takes on a one-of-a-kind stature yet is still related to the other artworks based on the same print. At Trillium Press and Urban Digital Color, they refer to such prints as “Edition Variée” (EV).

No matter how an edition is defined, or how long it is made, an edition represents a symbol of trust between the artist and the art buyer. Lind points out that for him there is a boundary between what is acceptable in terms of the integrity of an edition (for instance, a limited edition of five well documented prints) and what is not acceptable (for instance, editions of hundreds of reproduction prints with hand brush strokes added by people other than the artist, with different editions for different size prints, and with the false implication that these prints are original works of art).

One way to ensure the integrity of an edition is to provide detailed and specific print documentation with every artwork. At the Catharine Clark Gallery, the buyer of an artwork has, included on their invoice, a statement of exactly what constitutes the edition, referring to size, substrate, printing method and the number of the print in the edition.

Preservation, Archival Integrity and Longevity

Williams says, “Longevity issues and color fastness were concerns people had about digital. At the end of the day these concerns are a little hypocritical since many other (non-digital) media will have more archival problems than digital prints. That’s why we have conservationists.” On a similar note, Pritikin points out, “Visual art comes in infinite forms, from pastels, oils, and pencil drawings, to sky writing and sand sculptures, some art only lasting nanoseconds.” So the issue of longevity is always relative.

Digital printing technology has made enormous progress over the last 15 years in terms of longevity, durability and color fastness. Today’s generation of pigment inks are far more stable than traditional watercolor paintings. One question that arises regarding preserving artwork is the need for fixatives. Williams held a pigment print on paper, one that had not been sprayed with any fixative, under running water and showed that it didn’t run at all. He doesn’t use fixative, but I have found that a spray fixative helps prevent pigment inks coming off my canvases when I work into them with acrylic gel medium or pastel.

Looking Ahead

“The stuff we don’t know is the most exciting stuff!” exclaims Noah Lang of Trillium Press. The best is yet to come. Looking ahead, Pritikin points out that “there are countless media for art, and, of course, all the media that haven’t been invented. God knows what they’re going to have 20 years from now.”



Jeremy Sutton is a San Francisco-based portrait artist, author and educator, working in combined media. Jeremy has a M.A. from Oxford University and studied at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Drawing, Oxford, and the Vrie Akademie, the Hague, the Netherlands. Jeremy has authored several books, videos and DVDs on Painter and digital art, the most recent being Painter IX Creativity: Digital Artist’s Handbook (Focal Press, 2005) and Painter IX Simplified for Photographers (six- DVD set). See www.jeremysutton.com and www.paintercreativity.com/.