When we first started doing all of our digital printing, we print it exclusively in fine art papers and we loved doing hand torn edges and seeing the fibers of the paper. They’re really popular product but we found out once we started printing on canvas that look of the canvas and the response we got from people when they saw the images on the canvas. They always question, is that a photograph or some painting, what is it and it gave a new level of perceived value in the images by printing on the canvass.
One of the things we loved about printing on the canvas, traditional canvas prints were done with that a standard stretch. That’s where they get staple or staple on the side and those images almost always have to be put on the frame to hide the staples. The new technique is actually called the gallery wrap, it is where you take extra image area rotated on the outside of the edge and when the canvas wraps around part of the image area becomes part of the framing.
There are two thicknesses that you can do a gallery wrap in. This 5/ 8 is the standard and inch and a half is a little bit thicker one. It gives a little bit stronger feel for the print hanging on the wall. These images can also be framed. The response we get from clients that see it they always say. Is that a photograph, is that a painting, what is it and we get a lot of excitement from printing on canvases. And we found that there’s been a tremendous popularity and gain popularity in canvas prints.
One of the breakthrough is your canvas printing and then we’re using and makes it so easy for all of us to do our own canvas prints now is the breakthrough of a water based coating called eco-print shield. By having these coatings, this makes our canvases and archival Museum grade product that’s rate it well over a hundred years. These products are really user friendly. Its water based no fumes, no solvents, none flammable were previously all the products were solvent based, were flammable, were extremely caustic and they definitely weren’t good for your health.
There are two simple methods for applying eco-print shield, the first is rolling, and it’s a real simple, easy. Efficient way that you can do anywhere—because there are no fumes, you could do it in your house, you could do that in the garage, you can do it anywhere that’s dust free and then spray coatings. Spray coating requires the best of a booth, it is a little bit more efficient, a little bit quicker but the quality difference between the two, you can’t tell the difference.
Some other advantages about this water-based product is you’re not only can brush it, roll it or spray it but also comes in different surfaces, so you can impart glossy to your under water. Your images have water in it, you can apply it sudden to your images that you or skin tones you want to tone down a little bit or you can go a complete flat mat.
We sometimes even inter mix these products together, because what happen in the sudden in a mat, the way they knot the gloss down, is they add a diffuser to it and a diffuser actually tends to make the blocks and that look as black. So the key to still have really rich deep looking black is you always do your first one or two coats with glossy and then apply this out and your mat is your last coat and then we get still keep the real deep rich black on a canvases. Another real creative way you can use this product is you get inter mix the same products on the prints, so part of the print could be glossy, and part of print can have brush strokes or the matte or said matte. What we also found out is that glossy prints have the deepest rich colors and all saturation. Most vibrancy in the images but those have a high gloss to them so unless they’re displayed in really good conditions you get a lot of glitter in their prints.
So when we find when our print goes and that condition has mix lighting, whether be a lot of glitter. We would do glossy on first two coasts and our last coat we will hit it with a light coat of sand, it just knocks a little bit of shine off take to their reflections off which is a real good choice when using a mix lighting.
Another advantage of this product is that it makes your prints none yellowing, gives them the achievability, makes them water proof and its stops the cracking. The best canvases today are called micro pores and that’s actually a microscopic ceramic that’s on the surface of the canvas and when your canvas comes out of the printer. If you fold the corner, you’ll see cracking on the canvas but once see the cracking you can actually open it up. Put coating on it and it will totally cross-link bilaterally and stop the cracking from happening. And that’s one of the reasons we could do the gallery wrap and the folded corners is because this product is so flexible and it eliminates, virtually eliminates all the cracking.
Here’s a simple procedure for real coating. We take a piece of foam core, you need some type of flatten material where you can put the print on. Core get it a cardboard doesn’t work because it has the bumps in it so you need something smooth with on foam core was really good product for this application.
Place you canvas on top of it, for rolling I just take my four corners down. There’s a couple simple procedures that make your eco print shield really easy to use. The first is, every time you open a product and every time you close the product, shake the bottle. And the reason for that is that the air that’s in the bottle tends to dry the surface of the coating and former skin and that makes lumps in the bottle. If you shake it continuously before you open and after your close it, it eliminates it.
Also if you can store the product for more than a couple a weeks, if you add a couple ounces of water to set in the top of the coating. Just pour on top few ounces on top it also helps this subsides that problem. All we do, rolling is so simple. It’s actually fun, my kids loved doing it. All the students love doing this, it’s just the really easy way to apply the coating on it. Just pour a little bit into your tray, you saturate, there’s no need to dilute it, you saturate your roller. You roll only two directions forward and back and sometimes some of my customers they see a little bit of line on their prints. If you see lines on the prints then your second coating you can roll the opposite direction, just turn the print 90 degrees. The amount of pressure that’s on the roller is only the weight of the roller, I’m not putting it down with pressure on it at all. I just have just a weight to the roller is all that’s pressing down on it and your very first coat is the most important coat or it’s actually the hardest coat to put on because the canvas acts like a sponge. It’s really sunk in the water or the coating, so what you’re doing is you’re floating quite have been on the surface this pore can go on evenly. And then I’m rolling it again lightly over it just to help smooth out the lines even though you can even on this prints see a few little lines here, those will dry out. In regards to coating the proper to put on the eco, I’m going to show you a sample of a canvas. Here’s a sample of a canvas going from white to black, gradient blend, where you can see the black in the canvas and medium and a light and too heavy of a coating either rolling or spraying is going to be a solid white and you’re also start seeing this fish eyes on in the coating.
The perfect amount is just a translucent white in the dark area is you a translucent white. And you know it’s time to put on the second coat once the dark areas go perfectly clear. You don’t see any translucent white, no white at all. It’s always better to do multiple light coats than do one real heavy coat. As you can see this one here is too heavy, were so heavy that the blacks are pure white and we start seeing this effect called fish eyes in the coating.
So the proper the coating is when you just use a translucent white in the coating and your second coating and your third coatings happen after this coating goes perfectly clear. So when the dark areas, everything is on perfectly clear that’s when you know it’s time to put on the next coat.
The full test is a really important process too, what I like you to do is take a piece of printed canvas but uncoated, and fold the corner of the image. And notice you do see cracking on a majority of most canvases especially on the dark areas. After you’ve done your two coats, your two roll coats take the same corner and fold it again. And notice you can squeeze that as hard as you can and you don’t notice any cracking. If you sense any cracking at all then just lay it out flat again and add the third coat.
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