Difference between canvas printing and canvas painting

Buying a reproduction of a painting by an artist you love is the best way to decorate your home and give it your personal touch.

The decoration of your living space is very important, it is the place where you spend the most time.

What is a painting reproduction?

There are several ways to reproduce a work of art, a painting on canvas in this case. Techniques and difficulty vary, of course, as do production costs and time spent.

Canvas print

Although many websites sell canvas prints masquerading as reproductions of canvas - for internet marketing and placement reasons (and catching the galore of service), they are not, strictly speaking, reproductions; neither is a photo of a Van Gogh a reproduction of Van Gogh.

A canvas print is simply a photo of the artwork printed on a higher or lower quality canvas. It is a photo that takes itself for a work of art.

This is called giclee printing. It is done by means of a large printer, which uses inks which are more or less similar to paint, and allow printing directly on a polyester canvas - more rarely on a cotton canvas.

Cost of an 80 x 61 cm canvas print: around 20 to 80 US Dollars (USD). See Paolo Prints

Reproduction on repainted printed canvas

This type of reproduction uses the first technique, i.e. printing on canvas, as the basis of the painting to be reproduced. The painter then covers the canvas with layers of paints applied with a brush, matching them to the different underlying colors, while following the path of the original model.

This work gives a satisfactory and fast result, the painter using the model to "color" it, so to speak, a bit like in the coloring drawings we had as kids, with the numbers that corresponded to the colors.

The advantage is that a workforce made up of painters is not necessary; in China any manual worker can reproduce a painting after one to two weeks of training

Cost of a 80 x 61 cm repainted canvas print: around 80 to 180 USD

Hand painted oil reproduction on canvas

This is what we do at our breeding workshop (see the process by clicking on this link).

The artist painter will first prepare the canvas with a Gesso, a kind of base coat if you will, which unites the surface and prevents the cotton or linen canvas from "drinking" the paint - especially the first ones. layers.

Then comes the outline drawing, which is done by hand, in charcoal, in the old fashioned way. You can use layers for the larger models, some canvases measuring more than 5 meters.

Once the outlines have been drawn, we start to add the successive layers of paint, primer, layers of details, glaze for depth effects, etc.

The details are worked on last when everything is already dry.

This technique gives a much better result, but requires skilled artists and years of experience.

Cost of a hand-painted 80 x 61 cm canvas print: approximately $ 400-800.

Reproduction of a "museum" quality painting

Unlike what some unscrupulous merchant tries to sell you on the internet, museum quality copying ... is done in a museum.

Indeed, the reproduction can only be made on site, with the painting under the eyes, to have a perfect perception of the brushstrokes, colors, reflections.

Museums issue reproduction permits to certain artists and allow them access to the painting, so that they can reproduce them exactly.

It goes without saying that this type of reproduction is not given to many people, but there is a market for many retrained “forgers”.

You should also know that many paintings exhibited in various museums around the world are reproductions - brilliant identical reproductions, but reproductions all the same - the originals being kept in a warehouse, protected from damage to the environment. light and moisture.

Cost of an 80 x 61 cm museum-quality reproduction: approximately $ 5000

Table copy

It is, of course, the pinnacle of the reproduction of master paintings. This level of reproduction is akin to museum copying, but is intended to mislead experts. Which is of course illegal. It is fake in all its glory, Machiavellian perhaps, but one cannot help admiring the talent necessary to accomplish such a job.

The forger who makes a copy of a painting on canvas must do more than reproduce the work itself, he must do it with the materials of the time. That is to say the pigments of paints which were used at the time of the creation of the work of art, a support which is of the same material as that used by the artist, and not only of the canvas, the Mona Lisa , for example, is painted on a sheet of poplar wood, and the painting techniques that each artist specifically used - the sfumato in the above case.

Cost of a copy of a painting: within 200.000 USD and 10 years in jail.