by Inga Clemens

Inga Clemens has been Webmaster for the Watercolour New Zealand website since its inception in 2009. For 14 years she has worked day and night to keep our front window smart, attractive and up to date. Moreover, she has run our Instagram account and assisted with many extra challenges such as setting up PayPal and has contributed excellent articles to our newsletter. Here, she accumulates the wisdom of outstanding artists to assist all members interested in printing their work.


I reached out to talented artists to gather their valuable recommendations regarding the art of creating prints, as well as to share trustworthy contacts for professional printers and scanners in New Zealand. Below, you'll find a summary of the insights they shared.

Art Prints can serve as an excellent starting point for artists interested in independently selling their art for profit, without the need to navigate the realm of art collectors and commercial galleries.

Prints can continue to generate income even after an original being sold, as they can be reproduced and resold multiple times. Prints also allow artists to reach a broader audience. While original watercolor paintings are typically sold at higher prices, prints can cater to those who may not be able to afford an original piece but still appreciate the artist's work.

The availability of prints can attract potential buyers to explore an artist's other offerings, such as original pieces, commissions, or collaborations. In this way, prints become a marketing tool for drawing attention to the artist's overall body of work and building a loyal following.

The process of creating prints can also be a learning experience. It may involve working with different printers, adjusting colors, and learning about the printing process itself.

Creating a good art print involves several steps to ensure that the final print accurately represents the original artwork, here are some key considerations:

Start with a high-resolution scan or photograph of your original artwork. Use a professional scanner or camera to capture as much detail as possible. See scanners review below.

If you take a photo yourself - ensure proper lighting to minimize glare, shadows, and color inconsistencies. Set high print resolution to at least 300 DPI, otherwise the art print will be doomed from the beginning. Save your artwork in a lossless file format, such as TIFF, PDF (with do not downsample compression) or PNG, to preserve image quality. JPEG is fine for online display, but it may reduce quality when printed.

Read more on How to Photograph your Paintings by John Rundle, who spent over two decades as a professional photographer, mainly in the commercial and industrial field:

Where to print?

Print-on-demand companies streamline the process of turning your digital artwork into physical products that customers can choose from. The products are created and shipped to the customer, requiring minimal effort on your part, making it a hassle-free way to produce art prints.

Starting with such services is typically straightforward and cost-free. Take Printful.com , for instance; the process involves signing up, uploading your artwork, setting a markup price, making a sale, and leaving the printing and delivery to them. Other POD companies you worth trying: www.gelato.com
and www.candelafineart.com

However, print-on-demand services are not foolproof for making profitable art prints. If your goal is to maximize earnings, it's important to note that many of these services offer limited artist profits.

Printing Companies

Another popular option is to get a printing company to handle the printing of your art and leave the rest to you. This way, you can market the prints on your own accord. Choose a professional print service that uses archival-grade inks to ensure longevity and color stability and quality paper. You will want to opt for archival paper no less than 200 GSM ( grams per square metre, indicating the thickness and weight of the paper). Before making a large print run, always create a test print to check colors, sharpness, and overall quality.

When using this option you may consider offering limited edition prints accompanied by Certificate of Authenticity. By numbering and limiting the edition of prints, you can create a sense of exclusivity and urgency, potentially driving up demand and value.

Please see some of the NZ printing companies our artists use and recommend below.

Can you print at home? www.jackypearson.co.nz Jacky Pearson says you can! Jacky has just bought Epson ET- 8500 ink tank. The ET-8550 is a quality printer for art prints manufactured by Epson. It comes with some really nice features, making it worth every penny spent. This art printer produces superior image quality and high resolution prints at A3. Professional Media Handling up to 13" Wide. EcoTank Photo can print fully borderless on a wide range of papers from thin vellums, to fine art and photographic papers, to even posterboards up to 1.3mm thick.

Printers recommendations:

Alfred Memelink prints his Art calendars for several years on a row at Soni Design, Auckland www.sonidesign.co.nz . Alfred says: Soni is great to deal with, helpful affordable and reliable.

Jan Thomson for all her art prints, cards and calendars use Copyart company in Richmond, South Island www.copyart.co.nz

Raewyn Harris says: "I have had greeting cards made of some of my recent paintings and Im so thrilled with the colour reproduction and crispness of them. They were printed by Brebner Print www.brebnerprint.co.nz in Napier.

Sue Wickison :
"Fantastic contacts and recommendations are always good to pass on.
I have been working with Lee-Ann Hamilton for a while now and she is passionate, knowledgeable, patient and takes care over every project and print we have worked on together. Her results are stunning and she has a fabulous attention to detail and colour reproduction, which is what my work requires. She is tenacious to get the right result and just one hell of a nice and caring person to work with. She has a background of 22 years Fine Art printing behind her with a extensive knowledge of the printing business. Cant recommend her highly enough: Tawa Imaging - Fine Art Printers www.tawaimaging.co.nz .

For scanning I have worked with www.micrographics.co.nz company and find them superb to work with, extremely helpful and go the extra distance to minutely match colour and detail to the originals. Highly recommend them if you need museum quality top notch scans. They have branches in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch."