Nevue Fine Art Marketing

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Art Marketing
  • Pastel Paintings
  • Commissions
  • Giclee Prints
  • About
    • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
You are here: Home / Art Marketing / How To Make Prints Of Drawings

October 7, 2020 By Dave Nevue Leave a Comment

How To Make Prints Of Drawings

Share2
Tweet
Pin12
Share
Flip
Pocket
14 Shares
girl drawing

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase by clicking on an affiliate link, Nevue Fine Art Marketing may earn an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you. Affiliate relationships include, but are not limited to, Bluehost, Tailwind, Skimlinks, SareASale and StudioPress. To learn more visit Affiliate Link Disclosure Policy

How to Make Fine Art Prints Of Your Art For Killer Portfolios And Exhibitions

There is no better feeling than selling an original drawing, but did you know that you can earn even more money by selling reproductions of your pencil drawings?

Making high-quality digital images and giclee prints can help you create a professional online portfolio or a tangible portfolio that will help you to build a thriving art business.

But how do you get a digital image that does not lose all of the details?

Have you been trying to take pictures of your sketches with a smartphone or a digital camera? 

Are you disappointed with the quality of the digital image?

The good news is that it is possible to make giclee prints of your graphite drawings that accurately represent your originals. All you have to do is follow the steps in this post.

Scan Your Drawings

Learning how to make prints of artwork is going to be easier than you might have thought. 

The first step is to create a digital image of your artwork.

The tools you need to make a digital image will be different if you make prints from original paintings or prints from your drawings.

You can use a digital camera to capture an acrylic and oil painting’s colors accurately, but you will never capture all of the smooth value changes of a greyscale drawing.

To capture the smooth value changes of a drawing made with graphite, you will need to invest in a high-quality scanner.

The good news is that high-quality scanners are affordable.

I have been using the Epson Perfection V600 to scan my drawings, and I could not be happier with the scans’ quality.

Here are some draings I scanned with the Epson Perfection V600.

portrait drawing
Grand Slam Commission Drawing

For a list of other scanners visit, Best Art Scanner For Graphite Artists.

Scanner Settings

Make sure that your scanner is clean before you scan your drawing. Keep a cover over the scanner when it is not in use to keep it free of dust.

The most critical settings for the Epson scanner are the Image Type and the resolution.

Set the image type as 16-bit grayscale and set the resolution 600dpi or higher. I set mine at 720dpi.

Epson

Dpi is dots per inch. The more dots per inch you have the scanner set at, the better your scan will be. 

Most cameras have a dpi of 72, which is one of the many reasons digital cameras can not capture graphite’s smooth value changes. 

Edit Digital Image In Photoshop

The next step is to upload your digital image in Photoshop.

After you upload your drawing, go to the top menu bar and click Image > Adjustments > Curves.

photoshop curves

You will want to edit your image in photoshop whether you make prints from paintings, colored pencil drawings or pastels.

It is important to note that the prints will print darker than what appears on the screen because the light illuminates behind the image on the monitor.

When you are making the adjustments, you might want to make the image lighter. Always print a test print to compare it to the original before saving on your PC.

Save Your Digital Image To Your PC

After you have finished editing your drawing on photoshop, you will want to save it to your PC.

Naming the digital image with the title of the drawing is not only essential to locate it on your PC, but it will also contain keywords that will be searchable for when you upload images on your website and blog.

First, create a new folder in the picture settings on your PC and name it Images For Print.

How To Sell Art Prints On Etsy With Printful

save drawings

When you save an image to your new folder, you will see a section called File Name. This is the place where you name your image. The name you give your digital will be searchable on the internet when you publish it on your blog.

image name

How To Make Art Prints

After you have saved your digital image on your PC you are ready to make copies of your drawings.

There are three ways you can make copies of your drawings, and they are:

  1. Outsourcing your printing job with a local print shop
  2. Upload them to a print-on-demand site
  3. print copies at home

Local Print Shops

Your local print shops can make beautiful copies of your drawings. All you will have to do is bring a USB with your digital image to your local printing service, and they will make copies for you on high-quality archival paper.

The negative side of outsourcing your printing job with a printing service is that prints will be expensive, and you might have to order in bulk.

Print-On-Demand

Print-on-demand services make it possible for photographers and artists to sell fine art prints and giclee prints of their work without any upfront costs.

Services like Printful allow you to upload your drawings and set selling prices for merchandise like fine art paper, framed prints, mugs, shirts, and more.

Print At Home

Printing prints will be the most cost-efficient way of making prints after paying off the printer.

The cost of prints on Printful start at around $7.00, the same size print for me printing at home costs me $1.72

The printer I use is an Epson XP-15000.

To research other printers, visit 7 Best Printers For Printing Fine Art Prints.

Marketing Your Prints

To research other printers, visit 7 Best Printers For Printing Fine Art Prints.

The prints you make of your drawings should be called either fine art prints or giclee prints, and the name you use will depend on the printer and the paper you are using for the copies.

To learn more about the different prints, visit Limited Edition Giclee Prints – Fine Art Prints What Is The Difference.

You do not want to call the just prints because prints refer to the art of printmaking.

To learn more about original prints, visit Reproduction Print And Original Print – What’s The Difference.

Final Thoughts On How To Make Prints Of Drawings

Taking a little time learning how to scan and edit your drawings will pay off with increased art sales.

Deciding on what scanner you will invest in and how you will make copies of your artwork will be determined by your business goals.

Now that you know how to print art prints at home and where to print art prints, it is time to take action and make copies of your favorite drawings and make your portfolio and create listings on your website so you can earn money from selling giclee prints.

More Articles Relating To Art Prints

  • What Is A Giclee Print
  • How To Store Art Prints – Caring For Art
  • How To Sell Art Prints To Stores
  • What Size Art Prints Sell Best
  • How To Sell Art Prints Online (And Make Money)
Share2
Tweet
Pin12
Share
Flip
Pocket
14 Shares

Filed Under: Art Marketing, Blog

About Dave Nevue

Dave Nevue is a Professional Graphite Artist and the founder and CEO of Nevue Fine Art Marketing. He also authored the eBook The Productive Artist How to Live Your Dreams, and provides courses on art marketing at Nevue Fine Art Marketing Courses.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Newsletter signup

Join Nevue Fine Art Marketing's Newsletter to receive the latest art marketing articles.

Please wait...

Thank you for sign up!

Art That Sells

Art Marketing

Selling Art Online

How To Sell Art Prints

How To Price Art

Best Oil Painting Supplies

Best Acrylic Paint Supplies

Best Drawing Pencils

 

Popular Posts

Art That Sells – What Artists Need to Know21K Total Shares
How To Write An Artist Statement That Sells Art16K Total Shares
15 Places to Sell Art Online And Make Money15K Total Shares
How To Sell Paintings And Make Money14K Total Shares
How To Price Art – Ultimate Guide For Selling Art13K Total Shares

Disclosure:

Disclaimer: Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I receive a commission if you make a purchase. Affiliate relationships include, but are not limited to, Bluehost, Tailwind, and StudioPress. To learn more visit Affiliate Link Disclosure Policy

Not every link on this site is an affiliate link.

Related Resources:

Affiliate Link Disclosure Policy.

Cookies and Privacy Policy.

 

Where To Start

Art Marketing - Complete Guide For Marketing Art Online

Sell Art Online Startup

Favorite Art Marketing Tools

Free Drawing Tutorials

Art Jobs

 

Copyright © 2021 nevuefineartmarketing.com · Courses · ebooks

This site uses cookies: Find out more.