Varnishing & Protecting Giclee Prints

One of the biggest concerns for a professional artist is the archival nature of the materials used to create its art. A true professional artist is always making sure his/her work can withstand the pass of time. Artists from all over the world and throughout art history have accomplished this by using not only professional high quality and highly pigmented paints and the best surfaces to create their art but by protecting the surface of the finished painting with special varnishes. How to protect the surface of an original painting is crucial and it’s being a major concern throughout history. Old Master and Modern Masters have their own set of techniques and varnishes to protect their paintings, some using very basic materials while some go the extra mile preparing their own varnishes and potions to seal their works.

But in the case of Giclee prints, especially on canvas, due to the nature of this fairly new technique for artists to reproduce their images, not too much information is available. To understand how to approach this problem we need to clearly understand what a Giclee is. A Giclee is simply put a print produced by a modern large scale ink-jet printer. The mechanism of a Giclee printer is similar to an ink-jet home or office printer but there are many substantial differences that make these usually large scale printers unique and different in their own way.

A Giclee printer sprays minuscule drops of ink on the surface through special nozzles located in the print head of the printer. These nozzles in the print head and the technology involved in the placement of each one of these minuscule drops of inks on the surface is quite unique on these printers which separates them from a regular home/office printer. Giclee printers use a special water based, highly pigmented archival ink, not the same ink your home or office printer uses. This specialized ink was designed to not only deliver a wider range of colors that a regular home/office printer could never produce, but it was designed to be lightfastness, meaning the ink would resist or not be affected or faded by light particularly UV light. Giclee printers also offer a larger printing resolution than common home/office printers, producing a more detailed and high quality image. The surface in which to print a Giclee requires to be also of archival quality, so a new line of specialized fine art papers and canvases are available for artists as well.

But although the Giclee Print technology is so advanced in producing an archival, in many cases Museum high quality reproduction of an original the main problem has not been solved nor touched in depth ever since the Giclee Print technology came out, how do I varnish or protect my giclee print?!

The nature of the print is quite different from a Lithograph, or Screen Print. The ink on a Giclee is sprayed onto the surface, so anything touching the surface of the print could potentially ruin the print especially if the surface is canvas. Your fingers, water and even a regular varnish could remove or sumdge the ink from the surface causing a disaster, so the logic would be to apply the varnish in the form of spray.

Spray varnishes for prints are available in the market, from matte to glossy, many are water resistant and others are also UV resistant, which is quite great as the more protection the print gets the higher the lifespan, necessary for limited edition prints were the value of the print goes higher with time. My main problem with these new varnishes for prints especially the glossy ones is that they are not that glossy even using the recommended 2-3 coats written on the label, so I found myself applying more coats to achieve the look I wanted on my prints. But the fact that they deliver a poor result at least for me at a very high price considering one can of these varnishes can cost easily $15 or more and last just a couple of prints, was my main motivation to find a way to varnish large quantities of prints without breaking my bank while providing me the archival quality I want for my works.

Remember the ink for a Giclee print is usually water base, so solvent-base varnishes are completely out of the equation, the only varnishes that can be applied to a Giclee print are acrylic water-base varnishes. But even a sprayed water base varnish could potentially ruin your print if it’s not applied properly and leave you with an added expense. I’ve tried spraying water-base varnishes on a test print with many of the methods found today on the internet and the results were not quite what I wanted. I found a website that mentions to spray the varnish using a spray bottle, airbrush or spray gun, and these were my findings:

Spray Bottle> The mist on a spray bottle is never consistent and the risk of ruining the print by spraying larger dots of water-base varnish on a water-base print are quite high. So I discarded this method almost immediately.

Spray Gun> The second method mentioned was the Spray Gun. This is not quite a bad method but it requires a lot of practice and investment as the need for a good air-compressor and a good quality spray gun is required. The main problem I had with this method was the large amount of wasted varnish as even for a large size print a mist of varnish was sprayed all over my studio. Another problem that I noticed was the varnish dripping effect on the surface of the print, which can be solved by practicing and practicing and adjusting the nozzle. For this technique the leaning curve can be quite high but certainly not impossible if you have the time. I not only didn’t have the time to learn, nor I wanted to waste so much varnish I also didn’t like that I had to wear a mask every time I had to varnish a print with this method due to the cloud of varnish in my studio. So this one was also discarded.

Airbrush> The second method I tried was using my airbrush to spray the varnish and this was not only time consuming but catastrophic for my airbrush and did I mention time consuming? Airbrushes are designed for water-base paints, they need to be extremely liquid and fluid otherwise they clog the nozzle. Acrylic water-base varnishes are not liquid enough and did clog my airbrush many times during my testings. Also because of the narrow spraying range it takes more time to cover an entire surface. The results not satisfactory for what I needed and this one was also discarded.

So the need for a more permanent less expensive and time consuming solution is what I came up with and have tested for the past 4-5 years with excellent results.

I apply to my canvas Giclee prints a combination of sprayed and a brushed varnishes. The first varnish that I apply needs to be water resistant, and if it’s UV resistant even better. At this point I’m not concerned if its glossy or matte. In this category I’ve tested a couple that I’m really confident in using for my prints. The ones I use the most are Lascaux UV Protect and Lyson Print Guard. These spray varnishes can be quite expensive if used alone, so I just apply one coat to the print and let it dry for at least one hour.

The second varnish that I use is applied with a brush and is usually the same acrylic glossy varnish I use for my regular acrylic paintings. I use a variety of acrylic water-base varnishes in my studio depending on the look I want to achieve. The ones I use the most are Golden Acrylic Polymer Varnish, Winsor & Newton Galeria Acrylic Varnish, and Liquitex Acrylic Polymer Varnish all gloss. Since the first coat of water resistant varnish was already applied in the form of spray the surface of the print is already sealed (unless the coat was uneven) and the next 2-3 brush coats can be applied without any problems.

It is very important that one of the two varnishes used for giclee prints is also UV resistant as this adds an extra coat of protection to the print and increasing its lifespan.

Since all the varnishes I use are flexible I varnish the print before stretching it on the stretcher bars, that way I get an even film on the print and the print can be stretched without any problems.

I hope you find my method of varnishing Giclee Prints useful.

Until next article!

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