Questions and some answers about the process:

    1: What is this system called?

            Answer:  It is called Giclee'

    2: What is Giclee'?

        Answer: Giclee (pronounced Gee’clay) is a French term meaning to spray or squirt, which is how our equipment  works, unlike an inkjet printer that works with dots. Our equipment sprays a modified digital watermark image onto real heavy acid free canvas not paper that is made to look like canvas.

    3: Can I buy the equipment myself and print my own prints?

        Answer: If you are willing to pay a few thousand dollars and plan on creating a few hundred paintings a week, you should be buying your own. But if you only want a couple of paintings, you will find that TommyD's pricing is the best you are going to find.

    4: How long could I expect a painting to last?

        Answer: Many years, with proper care your painting should last over one hundred years.

    5: Will my painting have brush strokes like I see in expensive canvas art

        Answer: Yes. Your painting is done with brush strokes, over the watermark image the sprayer puts on canvas, much like paint by number with no numbers. 

    6: Is it legal to copy a photograph and convert it into a painting?

    Answer: Most pictures can be reproduced excepted if they were taken by a professional photographer and you do not have the rights to copy (this is what you sign when you had the pictures taken) . Paintings can be copied if you are the owner or the artist and the artist does not have a copyright for the painting and you are using the copies for yourself and not going to profit on them.  There is such a thing as the fairness of use act that covers coping art works.

Click here to read the free art license

    The fair-use exemption is more likely to apply when the copy:

• Is used for nonprofit educational purposes.
• Is a parody of another work.
• Is used for critical purposes such as in a newspaper review of a work of art.
• Is used in a work of scholarship.
• Is the very subject of something you're commenting on in your work.
• Is strictly for your own personal use and does not affect the income of the original creator.
• Does not contain the very "essence" of the original image.

More on the fair use exemption

For professional photographer or artist

    5:Why should I sell an art or a Giclee print rather than an original?
As an artist, I thought that the only thing to spend my hard-earned cash on would be an original work. After all, they are often available for reasonable amounts if you look for them. And, I must admit to being a bit snobbish about it really. Someone once said that when you buy an art print, all you are really buying is the frame. The print is not worth much, and will not usually appreciate in value, as could a painting. But then I remembered when I first began to collect art for my walls. I certainly could not afford originals, and art prints were my only option. In that way I could look at really great works of art for a minimum amount of money Think about all the time and effort you put into a painting. And then the joy of selling it. Trouble is, when it is gone, it is gone. And you have to start all over again. Now imagine selling it over and over again, at a reduced price so that many others can share your work,

If Thomas Kinkade only sold his original work not many people would have and enjoy them. when you visit his studios and see his work hanging on the walls you are admiring Giclee's.