to make good art you need $$$$$$

in researching Dorothy Simpson Krause for my artist profile tomorrow I have discovered a lot about how to make really lovely, deep toned, rich prints. The first thing I learned was that in order to produce quality art one has to sink a pretty penny into equipment and materials. Often times the difference between a nice print and an amazing one is the output device. It is funny to me that a lot of the digital artists I have read about all talk about what they print with, the Epsom 9600, bale blah blah... Flat bed printers that can print onto a 1 1/2 inch thick substrate. Also the materials one uses have to be top quality. The technique and skill one has is also, of course, important. I guess it's like cooking, a good kitchen and tools, the ingredients, their freshness and quality all count, and so does the chef.
I did discover in my research a couple of interesting things. I love, as I have said previously, really rich color. Umber, Red, Gold... I found a link to a company that produces this stuff... I don't know what to call it really. It is called inkAID and basically preps a substrate to add depth of color and luminance. It primes many surfaces allowing you to print on metal and it seals porous paper really nicely, or so they say. There are varieties of it, clear, gold, red, blue... They even offer a free sample pack of six different types of the magic stuff for free to first time buyers. Well, you pay $24 for shipping and handling. You can read more about it at www.inkaid.com .
I also read a bit about encaustic... Basically painting with pigment suspended in wax. It produces a really deep and I assume physically thick image. The pigment is literally suspended in the wax so you can look right into it.
the other thing I read about that I found interesting was "lenticular" imagery. Basically it is a method of creating mock 3-D images. You use photoshop to create 8 or so layers of the same image and layer them slightly off left to recede, right to protrude and then you run through a program called "flip!" and it created the image for you. From what I read you then mount the images in a convex, lenticular lens for displaying. It looks deep to the viewer.
these are all techniques that Krause has employed in her work, among many others. She is a true educator and seems willing to share a lot of what she discovers with the rest of the world which is something I admire...