A Guide to Printing My Digital Artwork Files

If you've purchased one of the digital artworks from my online shop, first of all - thank you. Your support is helping me spend more time doing what I love.

When it comes to printing images there are loads of options available. You may wish to print them at home, display them in a digital frame that can show multiple images from a USB stick or SD Card or print them professionally. This guide is to help advise on getting my artwork printed by a professional print company, which is my most recommended option as it delivers the best results (and may not be as expensive as you'd think).

Print Method

The option I use is what is called "Silver Halide" or "C-Type Photographic Printing", which is one of the most widely used archival forms of printing. It's basically a light sensitive, chemical based dark room method which has been refined over years and produces deep blacks and pure whites, which is ideal for my dark style of artwork.

Paper Type

The paper I typically use is "Fuji Professional DPII Photo Paper" with what is called a "Lustre" finish. The Fuji Crystal Archive Professional Lustre features a very natural photographic finish reminiscent of traditional photographic printing. It's coated with a slightly stippled texture which is very resistant to fingerprints, scratches and scuffs, featuring a semi-matt finish with minimal glare.

Print Size

When selling prints online, I went for a fairly small 8 x 8 inches size as it was convenient to package and send. However, with the file downloads I provide through my shop, the typical file resolution is 4000 x 4000 pixels at 300 DPI, which should comfortably print at much bigger sizes. 12 x 12 inches for example should not be a problem.

Further Advice

I am by no means a print expert, but the methods/options above achieved the best results for me personally. If you have some useful suggestions or advice based on experience, please feel free to leave them in the comments below or contact me. I would love to learn more and update this guide as much as possible to help others achieve the best results.

It's been 5 days since my last post and I'm happy to say I've made quite a lot of progress. I spent a significant part of the weekend in hyper-focus mode, configuring everything to (hopefully) make the online shop experience as smooth as possible.

I've started by uploading some of my older works from 2019 and early 2020, which I've categorised as such to help you filter by year (I've done one for 2021 as well). I find it to be a useful way of organising older work, for those into the "classic" stuff, but also as I add the newer works it helps to see the difference and how I've grown or refined my style... maybe... I'm not suite sure. I hope I've improved anyway or at least will in a few years when I look back at these.

For the moment I've decided not to upload EVERYTHING I've done, so there will be a few illustrations on Instagram and Facebook that aren't available for download and print. I've tried to choose what I feel are the better works, but if there is a favourite missing that you REALLY want, by all means please let me know and I'll look to add it. I have considered possibly even doing a series of "experimental works" (at a lower price than my usual artworks) which aren't quite up to a standard I feel are "download worthy" at the moment, but it may interest some of you. Let me know your thoughts on this.

I still haven't "officially launched" the online shop and website. Those of you who are seeing this early and/or who have subscribed to the newsletter already, thank you! It will take a bit more time to add the 2020 and 2021 artworks, so please be patient as this may take another week or so.

If you haven't subscribed to my newsletter yet, please do so to keep updated when the site is officially launched. You may also gain some extra exclusive stuff over the year, such as exclusive prints, discounts, maybe even a freebie...

Thanks as always to anyone reading this for your support.

- Nodd

Today is the launch of my new website! While it will likely be quite a small and humble start, I have high hopes for the future thanks to all the support I've received personally and on my Instagram and Facebook pages (if you are one of those people reading this, thank you).

Prior to Covid-19, I was selling an initial limited print run of my artwork on Esty. This worked well and the positive response exceeded all of my expectations. Once the pandemic hit though, I closed the store which has been for almost a year now. People from all over the world have asked about purchasing prints for my artwork, which I have been unable to do for various reasons. This is something I now hope to address with the new Noddegamra website.

I've spent time researching various ways that other creatives are tackling this issue and the main successful methods seem to be running a Patreon page or selling digital files for people to print locally. While I prefer to have more control over the quality of print (I use a fairly local print company with high quality materials and standards) and the personal touch of being able to write/add a note, sketch and/or letter when I post a print, I believe an approach inspired by these more digital methods may be the best for the year ahead.

While proposing the Patreon idea on Instagram, the response was over 90% in favour of creating one. I still have my doubts as to how many people will sign up or use a membership platform for my artwork, but one of the kind people who reached out to me (@Ellusio) told me of the Latvian saying: "Mēģināts nav zaudēts", which apparently roughly translates to "Trying isn't losing". So with that, I'm going to try regardless of doubt and fear of failure.

With my background in developing websites and ecommerce stores, I'm going to chip away at this in my spare time to create a central hub for my artwork. The general idea is to create an opportunity for anyone to access and print my artwork, regardless of location and logistics, while also making it affordable/high-value, but in a way that also helps support what I do and furthering my creative journey. At first I did consider a subscription service allowing members to download 2-4 artworks per month, but I'm not sure if the pressure to deliver or creating for the sake of fulfilling a financial agreement is the best way forward for me. So instead, for now, I think the "pay for what you want, when/if you want it" is the best course of action (if you'd prefer a subscription service similar to Patreon though, please let me know in the comments below).

As the world recovers from Covid-19, I'll then look at offering things like signed artworks or limited run prints that I've overseen in terms of quality etc, but I think the digital format will allow a wide variety of people to use and print my illustrations at a lower cost than purchasing them all individually as prints, with the convenience of doing it in their own country, with their own preferred print supplier, or even using them as digital wallpapers or in those cool digital art frames that switch between several images at random. There's more flexibility this way.

I'm not sure who if anyone will actually read this post, but I felt it was important to at least mark the occasion of launching the new site as some sort of milestone I can look back on. If you did read this and you are one of those amazing people who supports me, comments on my artwork, likes, and shares it, then thank you. Your support has taken me from not drawing at all or "doing the odd drawing", to incentivising me to create more regularly, and now onto this next stage of creating a website. You've helped me achieve this and it will be interesting to see where things go from here...

Copyright © 2021 Noddegamra. All Rights Reserved. 
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