After a lot of research into my options, I've decided to sell my art online.
Right now, there are two places where you can buy my work:
At ryanpainter.com/buy, I currently have two prints for sale. These are hand-printed by myself. More will be uploaded once I take inventory of my work. This is your best and cheapest option for work.
At saatchiart.com, I will be selling photo prints of some of my photos, as well as of my paintings and prints. Just to be clear, these are digital prints of pictures of my work that I upload. I am not making the prints, just the original image. I chose Saatchi Art because it handles a lot of the logistics and marketing, and because it maintains a professional image. I had to make the prices a little more expensive to fit their selling guidelines.
After that thrilling read, I'd like to tell you a little about Lithography
I spent July 6-12 at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, CO. The Ranch is a nonprofit organization that teaches workshops, houses artists-in-residence, and brings in speakers year-round. I've never been around a friendlier, more creative, and interesting group of artists than during my week there, and I hope to return as soon as I can.
I took a workshop on lithography there, taught by CU-Boulder professor Matt Christie. Lithography is a type of printmaking that has been around for over two centuries. It is considered the "crown jewel" of printmaking because of its complexity and clarity of reproduction. If you are interested in an overview of the process, here is a video that took me 10 seconds to find on YouTube. It looks promising.
The real, step-by-step method took ten pages of notes and two full days to record. Here are the essentials. A litho drawing is made with a special wax-based crayon, usually on limestone slab (we used aluminum plates). After the drawing, you wipe the plate with gum arabic and buff it to create a negative of the image. This is basically a detailed stencil which can be inked up with a roller and then printed. Remember that oil and water don't mix, and you'll get the basic idea.
Drawing on an aluminum plate with a wax crayon.
The workshop surveyed several methods to make a lithographic print. Originally, lithography used several toxic chemicals, and print nerds are always experimenting to find safer substitutes. The image at the top of the page, Croc Diamond, was made using printer toner, brushed and melted onto the plate. Lithography can produce a high level of detail, which means that your litho drawings look like pencil drawings. Here is the finished version of the drawing shown above:
Have You the Nerve?, lithograph.
We experimented with washes and different kinds of plates - photo transfer and polyester plates. The actual printing process is tricky: you have to keep the plate wet until just before you print, or else the ink sticks to the plate and you begin to lose detail in your image. Below, I used with deletion fluid to smear my drawing. I really like the way it gave a mysterious shrouded feeling to the picture, which was of a shark.
Shark, lithograph on polyester plate.
These are just a few of the lithographs I made. I was working all day and most of the night for the week, trying to get as much practice as I could. The workshop really showed me how much I enjoy printmaking. Right now I'm trying to find more opportunities to get involved with the profession.
I have to thank the NSAL for giving me a generous scholarship and making my workshop at Anderson Ranch possible. Click here if you are interested in learning more about that scholarship.
I'm in the process of uploading some of these pictures to my website and my Saatchi Art page. If you are interested in buying photo prints (not printed by me) of some of these images, go to http://www.saatchiart.com/ryanpainter.
Ryan