Digital BW, The Print

Hi Eric:
It's been quite a while for me also, since I last saw a Seurat live, but my 
impression was exactly the same as yours. Quite amazing how he constructed 
the visual impression of colors with dots of other colors.

And  I  agree that "giclee"  sounds affected. Well, back to old "Black & 
white inkjet print" <G>.

Regards,

Bert

katzung1@...
www.astronomy-images.com
www.visionlightgallery.com/katzung/

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eric Vogel" <evogel@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2005 10:05 PM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Seurat and Black Only Printing


Hi Bert,

As I recall, Seurat created his often rather muted colors out of
outrageously bright dots of color. Part of his "optical" theory. If
well lit, which little is in museums these days, the colors have a
wonderful vibrancy and as you walk up to the surface it resolves into
intense bright dots of raw color. You may find bright red dots in a
"yellow" area, or even less intuitive effects. Its been some years
since I looked at a live Seurat, but I would say that to the best of
memory he did not use black or white paint. (in fact, many folks at
the time didn't use black much at all - they wanted to paint light,
and they knew the color of shadows came from the sky). When he needed
a grayish tone, he used dots.

Now, he certainly didn't use CMYK, but Epson et al do. And so the
dots can be small, large, overlapped, etc. to get various "colors" at
viewing distance. With pigmented inks, the reason the colors "all
flow together" is because you are looking at them at a distance where
your eye cannot resolve the dots. Whip out a good x10 loop and all of
a sudden you can see dots.

I just printed a "B&W" image on my little CMY HP Photosmart. FWIW I
turned off all their "optimizations" in the driver. Under the loop,
they quite neatly stacked CMY into a single dot. Impressive control
really. Perhaps with x100 I would see the edges of color?

Anyway, Seurat used dots of pigment. Monet, Renoir, and the gamut of
Impressionists used brush strokes, glazes, and all the other
techniques of oil. But not dots. At most, dabs.

So, I still like the Seurat reference. Not perfect, but then I think
we are really just having fun here, yes?

Just my 2 cents: to me giclee has always seemed a little affected,
sort of like companies in the US referring to their corporate HQs as
Centres. I wonder if folks in France would call the Centers?

--Eric