The pictures are of one of my digital prints alongside the tiny original. In the third one I’ve included a roll of clear mailing tape to help establish scale. The original is just under 10 inches long while the enlargement is 32 inches long.
I wanted to take quick, grainy, amateurish photographs to post here at my blog because for me it is ah-MAAAAZing to be able to do this: to take a modest little scribble and blow it up large, on great paper and with very good print-resolution. All while sitting at my computer in Newport, RI, scanning the original, posting a few links, setting up FolioTwist and ImageKind to accept payment and … ta-daaa! One week later, I get this vast print.
You can’t see the quality of the resolution in this photograph, but believe me, it’s like silk-screen. You can feel the ink on the paper. Blackest black on whitest white.
It may seem as if this is no different to spending a little time at a Kinko’s or some other photocopying facility but it really IS. The end result is like a museum shop’s printed posters. And without all that struggling with inscrutable machines, slightly superior shop non-assistants and the considerable expense, because enlargements cost a fair amount. And the time. This print, by contrast, costs $42, unframed, plus shipping. Ordering took about as long as it takes to buy books on Amazon.
I’ve worked with so many different kinds of printing facilities — from commercial letter-press, using lead type, where my line-drawings were rendered as zinc plates nailed onto bits of wood (seriously!) to … photo-offset printing in glossy magazines to … well, now this.
Takes my breath away.
