In Focus Vol. 4 No. 6

Lizza Studios Can Handle the Big Jobs

Lizza Studios can handle just about any type of art-reproduction project that comes along.

If you’ve started making reproductions for artists in your local area, you probably have encountered some jobs in which the artist wanted something bigger or more detailed than you could deliver. It helps to know about good places to turn for help.

Lizza Studios in Tunkhannock, Pa., has assembled such an impressive suite of capture, scanning, printing, and finishing capabilities that they can handle just about any type of art-reproduction project that comes along. The studio’s founder Bob Lizza knows what matters to artists, because he is a painter himself. He also has an eye for color honed by graphic design and close to 20 years of experience in the print world.  

Scanning Large Paintings: Because Lizza knows that every brush stroke and detail is important to the artistic integrity of a painting, he invested in the Cruse C285 ST scanner, a high-resolution, large-format flatbed scanner. When a painting is placed on the bed of the scanner, a Synchron table system moves the art steadily under a bank of lights, providing even illumination as the image is captured using a large-format digital lens and a 10,000-pixel CCD array.

The process can handle paintings as large as 60 in. x 90 in. in one pass and produce files sizes as large as 1 GB. Due to the efficiency of the lighting system and precision of the Synchron table, much larger originals can be accommodated. Positional lighting allows total control over showing variances in textured surfaces.

Epson Stylus Pro 11880 and the GS6000: Lizza Fine Art can print extra-big, too. They are equipped with two 64-in. Epson Printers: the Stylus Pro 11880, which uses UltraChrome K3 aqueous inks with three densities of black inks and the Epson Stylus Pro GS6000 solvent-ink printer which uses orange and green inks to widen the color gamut.

The Stylus Pro GS6000 is ideal for longer-run art-reproduction projects. It not only prints faster, but the output doesn’t require the extra step of applying a protective clearcoat. Plus, the solvent inks and media cost less. As a result, the Epson GS6000 has helped Lizza compete for larger jobs for hotels and corporations.

While the Epson Stylus Pro 11880 still retains the quality edge for black-and-white photos and images with subtle mid-tones, Lizza says he has used the GS6000 to reproduce large paintings with strong colors.  For example, after scanning a 30 x 90-in. original of an underwater scene painted by Caribbean artist Patrick Chevalier, Lizza chose to output a full-size reproduction through Onyx RIP software on the Epson Stylus Pro GS6000: “The color was outstanding, and I didn’t have to varnish it, which would have been difficult on a print that size. It took about 30 minutes to run the print, and probably would have taken an hour-and-a-half on the Epson 11880.”

Custom Profiling: Lizza reports that the output from the GS6000 comes very close to the art they have been printing with their Epson aqueous-ink printers. He attributes the color-matching in large part to the high quality of ICC profiles he creates for the exact printing conditions and materials used in his studio. His goal is to get the ink limits to the point that it’s possible to maximize the amount of ink that can be applied to the material and then control it with the profile.

“There are a lot of decisions to make in the profiling process, and it’s easy to go in the wrong direction. If you’re using any of the Epson photo printers, most people don’t realize that you have to treat it like an RGB device to get the maximum color gamut. The driver will do the CMYK conversion from RGB.” explains Lizza. “The other problem is that some people will supersaturate things to try to get colors in the most colorful places. That blows away all of your gray balance, and that’s how you go down the wrong road in color-matching the piece.”  With the GS6000, he believes it essential to use either the ColorBurst or Onyx RIP, “Once you get through one or two jobs, it’s straightforward and there’s quite a bit of control.” The accuracy of the color-measuring tools is also critical. Lizza says, “I’ve always liked Monaco’s Profiler Platinum for the Epson driver.”

After the Printing is Done: Lizza’s extreme attention to detail and service doesn’t end with the printing. For works printed on canvas, Lizza Studios uses a spray booth and HPLV spray system that provides a great deal of control over the varnishing process. Lizza notes that “We can lightly coat the print once. Or if an artist wants a higher gloss, we’ll give it two or three coats.”

If an artist requires it, Lizza Studios will supply a certificate of authenticity that not only assures art buyers that the piece is a genuine, limited-edition giclée, it also ensures that the artist has a record of what was printed, what substrate was used, the date it was printed, and how many pieces were produced.

Billy Lopa, who makes sports-themed paintings as large as 4 x 6 ft., is a huge fan of Lizza Studios: “We’ve been working with Lizza for four or five years. They are by far the best we’ve ever worked with. A lot of what I do is last minute for a major sporting or charity event, and I can call Bob to get a project done in record time.”

Lopa, who started out selling his work at local art shows and sports memorabilia shows, now has literally thousands of collectors of his work. His pieces hang in the homes of many well-known sports figures, including Muhammed Ali, Roger Clemens, Michael Jordan, Yogi Berra, and Peyton Manning.     

Working in acrylics, Lopa uses a splatter technique in which the colors are applied with a pallet knife. He believes that applying bold colors with the splatter technique helps capture the spirit of the athlete in motion.

 “All of our limited editions are printed large, and all are artists recreations, where I’ll spend six to eight hours embellishing the print,” says Lopa. “Then, I sign and number it in paint.”  He is thoroughly impressed by how accurately Bob Lizza matches the color: “I’ll use ten shades of every color, and he nails them all. It’s amazing! I put the print next to the original, and it’s perfect.” Lizza Studios uses the Epson GS6000 and LexJet's Sunset Gloss Canvas SUV to print Lopa's art.

International Artexpo is the premier trade show for artists seeking to connect with retail gallery owners, art publishers, interior designers, and architects. Before the Artexpo in New York earlier this year, Lizza made reproductions for Galia Gluckman (pictured on the right with Betsy Green of Lizza Studios), a South African artist who creates large-scale, layered collages out of tiny bits of colored paper, cut from old magazines and scraps of wrapping paper that otherwise would have been discarded. (She won the Global Green Artist Challenge for Best Overall Green Piece at this year’s Artexpo.)

For Gluckman, Lizza scanned 15 very large originals on the Cruse scanner so that the prints would have enough detail to accurately convey the full dimensionality of her collage mosaics. After Gluckman chose which pieces she wanted to display at Artexpo, Lizza made prints as large as 59 x 120 in. using LexJet’s Sunset Select Matte Canvas on the Epson Stylus Pro 11880. The prints were protected a light layer of LexJet’s Sunset Gloss Coating.