Futon Heaven

If you love art but think that high-quality original artwork is out of your price range, you might look at collecting art prints. Art prints, including the lovely Giclee prints, are beautiful yet relatively inexpensive. Prints can be framed and displayed in your home while increasing in value over time. For these reasons, art prints make great collectibles for price-conscious art lovers.

Hearing the term “art print” may lead you to think of books containing low-quality art reproductions or of cheap art posters. However, you might not know that art prints are collectables that are valued and owned by even the most rich and esteemed connoisseurs and even are part of museum collections.

Most art prints are only produced in limited quantities using the highest quality printmaking techniques available. The original artist oversees every aspect of the printmaking process. Each print is given a number to show where it ranks within the number of prints produced. The artist then often hand-finishes the prints and signs them personally. For these reasons, the art world often values art prints as highly as they do original drawings and paintings.

People who are in the market for art prints need to start by looking to see if the print was only produced in limited numbers. You can find the production number on each print. Rule of thumb is that the lower the number produced, the higher the value of each print. In addition, lower numbers in the series are often worth more. In fact, first, second, and third prints are often considered valuable collectibles.

You should also look for which print technology has been used if you are going to evaluate prints. You’ll want to select the ones which use a high-quality printing technique. Woodblock, silkscreen or Giclee prints are good examples. Giclee prints are a variation on ink jet technology. They are one of the newest printing methods available. Prints done in this technology will be highly photo-realistic, and are likely to increase in value of the years to come. The best printing technologies produce high quality images, but are also able to produce subtle differences in the end-product, which help substantiate different prints of the same image, and makes them unique from one another.

In your search for quality art prints, you need to consider the many different genres of prints available. Some popular genres include floral painting, landscape artwork, and still-life prints. Floral Giclee prints are extremely sought-after, beautiful, and highly valued. However, the genre you ultimately choose should reflect your personal taste as well as the decor of your home.

Art prints, including the lovely Giclee prints, are beautiful yet relatively inexpensive. Prints can be framed and displayed in your home while increasing in value over time. Hearing the term “art print” may take your thoughts into the cheap art reproduction marts that have cropped up in every mall. However, art prints can be much more valuable than that. Many wealthy art aficionados have included very expensive art prints in their collections. In fact, even many art museums display high-end art prints. You should look for particular genres or types of prints, such as landscape artwork or floral painting.

- Gray Hamilton