Limited Edition Prints
No, they’re not just photocopies!
Specifically, the process used to publish Owen’s Limited Edition Prints is called Offset Lithography.
The relationships that Owen builds with his press people has taken years of experience and more than a little stress in learning to reproduce Owen’s art they way it deserves to be.
Now when Owen works with new people he can walk them through the exacting processes very smoothly and succinctly.
But it took years to get it to that point.
Very few people in the printing, publishing or graphics industries have the expertise to accurately and correctly handle the black and white range that exemplify Owen’s drawings; they can handle color fine, but black and white – especially with the singular levels of contrast and detail – are almost counter-intuitive in their complexity.
How Owen’s Limited Edition Prints are reproduced:
Step One: The Scan
When Owen has completed his drawing, the first step is to capture his drawing digitally. For his more recent works, they’re not scanned in the
familiar manner, rather they’re captured using a high quality digital camera in a studio specifically built and lit for the purpose.
Step Two: Pre-press
The next step is to ‘correct’ the image. All of the pre-press work is done on special computer workstations on color and luminescently calibrated monitor screens.
Even the best scans fail to accurately capture the extreme range of tones that Owen uses, so typically the darkest blacks need boosting, and the few lightest lights need ‘lightening’.
A simple way to think about it is in percentage of ink coverage: White is 0% and full black is 100%. In Owen’s case, they do a greyscale and another of black – so each print actually gets printed twice.
Once the image looks right, the size, border and any text (copyright and publishing information, etc) is added, and a plotter proof is printed off.
Step Three: To the Presses
After pre-press, the printing plates are burned – and you can kind of think of them as a photo negative combined with a silk screen.
To give the most control over the process two different plates are burned: one for greys and one for blacks. This way, if an adjustment is needed, say to deepen the blacks by adding more ink, the grey will remain unaffected by the change.
Printing is still a very fickle process, as there’s lots that can go wrong. A roller can slip, the ink may being to dry a little in the well, paper
changes due to humidity, and there’s tons of paper dust in the air (it’s just like sawdust in a mill).
The pressman and Owen constantly check the prints coming out of the machine for quality. Traditionally, these were called Artist’s Proofs (Artist's Proofs, below)
When the prints are finished they’re set aside for several days to cure, that is, allowed to dry properly, then they’re trimmed to size and packaged for delivery to the artist.
And last but not least, the printing plates are destroyed. A Limited Edition has to be limited. (See Open Editions, below)
Step Four: Signing and numbering
“I hate this…it’s by far the worst part of the job…”
 |
 |
Each of Owen’s Limited Edition Prints is signed and numbered by hand, by Owen.
There’re no real rules about this, but traditionally this is done by hand, by the artist. However, the numbering is nothing more than a serial number showing the size of the edition and which print this is, so at some future point Owen may consider mechanically publishing the serial numbers directly on the Limited Edition Prints.
“Especially if the TV show starts…there’s no way I could number all those prints!”
Every one of Owen’s Limited Editions and Artist Proofs an embossed seal directly over his signature
to verify its authenticity and to help prevent tampering and unauthorized and illegal reproductions.
Open Editions
A Limited Edition means that there is only a set (albeit arbitrary) number of Prints published, and that’s it.
When they’re gone, they’re gone. One can‘t just print off a few more is it sells out. That’s unethical at best, and fraud at worse (you can’t sell something as a Limited Edition if it’s not).
Some artist’s publish what are called ‘open editions’. Each print is still signed and numbered, but if they sell out, the artist can just run off more copies.
They tend to begin the practice to save money. They only publish a low number to keep expenses down, and they rationalize it by thinking “And if they sell, then I can get more done up.”
However, there’s lots of evidence that this is a false economy, and it actually hurts the collector.
The Print itself, because it’ll never ‘sell out’, has little or no secondary value. The marketplace will never pay a premium for it – until the artist dies – because they can always contact the artist to get another one.
With a Limited Edition Print, the total amount is published at the outset. When they sell out, the market demand is allowed to find its own price, because that’s all there is, and will ever be.
 |
 |
