What's involved in the custom reproduction of paintings?

Can you guess which painting is the original and which one is the reproduction?

If you guessed that the painting on the left is the original, you're right!

The painting on the right is an oil reproduction made by a painting artist.

The differences in the reproduction of paintings are marked by the time elapsed, the type of pigment used, the skill of the artist, and the canvas used. However, painting replicas buyers accept these small differences, and some even prefer the bright colors of the reproductions over the originals!

Only in major art forgeries is it very difficult to distinguish between the original and the reproduction, as special techniques are used there to age the paintings.

Let's look at some of the methods used in the reproduction of paintings:

Reproduction of Canvas-Printed Paintings

This niche in painting copies is on the rise, as traditional canvases, mainly cotton, are used with ink prints made by large format printers such as Epson. In this category, there are Giclee canvas prints with traditional dyes or high-durability or "archive" pigments. Also in this category are embellished fabric prints. The technique is simple, a painting is printed on cotton or synthetic canvas, and once the painting is dry, an artist adds oil on the surface, enhancing the painting and adding texture.

There is a marked difference between paintings that are mass-printed on canvas (Lienzographies) and Glicee prints, observe the following chart:

In the image on the left, the painting is printed with normal ink. On the left, the painting is printed using the Giclee technique.

In Giclee the resolution matters! Any image you plan to use for printing artistic impressions should be at least 300 DPI in relation to the physical size you expect to print.

Commonly used in the world of printing, DPI stands for Dots Per Inch and relates to the number of physical dots printed within a given square inch.

Having said that, the appearance of a high-quality art print depends greatly on the quality of the digital image and its resolution, and we know that images with that type of resolution are very rare and very hard to obtain. A simple Google search is not enough.

Reproduction of Paintings Printed on Paper or Sheet (Posters)

When printing in offset, an image is divided into four "color channels" known as CMYK. This means cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

These prints, also called offset prints, are also subject to the quality of the source image (the resolution), the printer used, the inks, and the paper. There is always the risk here that the source image is of low resolution and therefore the final product will also be of low quality. Although there are photographs of famous paintings freely available on the internet, very few can actually be found with the necessary resolution to make a print worthy of the work. The only way to do it is by scanning the works with specialized scanners. Of course, with this technique of reproducing paintings, there is zero texture, and therefore the appearance of “cheap paint” is a characteristic of the reproduction. This is not the way for anyone wishing for a high-quality copy of a painting.

Offset printing is one of the oldest and most widely used printing styles, having been around since the 1870s, but it's not highly recommended for obtaining high-quality reproductions of artwork.

Generally, the result is not good and disappoints the buyer. Here it is worth mentioning, without being facetious: you get what you pay for!

Artist-Authorized Oil Painting Reproductions

The reproduction of oil paintings in visual arts dates back to the 16th century when it was a common practice for art students to copy their old masters to learn to paint. The process of copying a masterpiece allowed them to Practice a skilled painting style while developing their own style. This allowed ordinary people to cling to reproductions of oil paintings worth thousands of dollars. Leonardo first learned to paint in the style of his master before following his own approach, then copied his master's painting style.

When copying a painting, the student learns the artist's method; their approach, and the mixing and gradations of color.

By the late 19th century, Degas diligently copied masterpieces from his favorite artist, Ingres. He also made a careful, large-scale copy of Poussin's The Rape of the Sabines, now located at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. The list of famous artists who copied the old masters is endless; Landseer to Rubens; John Singer Sargent to Velázquez; Henri Fantin Latour to Titian and Veronese, Géricault to Caravaggio; Watteau to Titian, Van Dyck to Tintoretto, Matsys to Raphael, just to name a few.

So pronounced was this practice that even Picasso famously stated, "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

Silkscreen Painting Reproductions

The technique of reproducing paintings through silkscreen has been around for over 100 years. It is a medium that has been used to stunning effect by artists such as Andy Warhol, Romero Britto, LeRoy Neiman, and many others. But what exactly is a silkscreen? Silkscreen is a term that comes from "seri", which means "silk" in Latin, and "graphos", which means "writing" in ancient Greek. The word was coined in the early last century to distinguish the artistic use of the medium from its more common commercial purpose. We are familiar with silkscreen in countless forms. It is used from t-shirt logos to posters.

The roots of the medium lie deep in history. It was used especially in the far eastern countries, China and Japan, as a technique to apply stencils to fabrics and screens. Silkscreen is allied with wood printing, which first emerged in those countries for similar purposes.

Fantasy Night, Itzchak Tarkay

Both techniques were embraced by European artists and artisans in the 15th century and further developed for a wide variety of decorative and artistic applications.

At its most basic level, silkscreening involves covering portions of silk or similar material with a coating. First, the silk is stretched over a frame hinged to a plinth. Then, the image window is masked with tape and a layer of shellac or glue is applied. Any part of the silk that is exposed becomes the design through which ink or another pigment, such as paint, is pressed with a squeegee or brush. This simplified description hardly does justice to the technical flexibility and artistic versatility of the medium.

Reproduction of Paintings on Photographic Paper

A good reproduction of paintings on photographic papers is performed on archival quality matte paper. This is the best paper to preserve fine arts, as it is a specialized, long-lasting paper for reproducing paintings and photographic prints. It features a smooth, heavy (230g), neutral white, matte surface, designed for accurate color reproduction that provides high contrast and high-resolution output. The preferred paper does not contain acid, making it the perfect choice for both photographs and fine art reproductions. Note that this type of painting reproduction is also subject to the quality of the paper.

How to Distinguish Quality in Painting Reproduction?

Even within these aforementioned categories, there are significant differences in quality, price, sizes, and color fidelity in the reproduction of paintings. 

At Kuadros we specifically cater to a type of clientele demanding high-quality oil painting reproductions. These are paintings made with extreme skill, where expert copying artists strive to get as close as possible to the original author's intention.