The Digital Darling: A Quick Look at Giclée
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Let's start here. A Giclée (pronounced 'zhee-clay') print is, at its heart, an incredibly sophisticated inkjet print. Think of a printer, but instead of churning out office memos, it’s using a dozen archival-quality inks to spray microscopic dots onto beautiful, heavy art paper. The level of detail it can capture is astounding. It’s a master of reproduction.
If an artist paints a watercolour or creates a piece of digital art, a Giclée is the best way to create a near-perfect, faithful copy. It’s precise, consistent, and brilliant for capturing subtle gradients and photographic imagery. It’s a technological marvel. But the key word here is ‘copy’.
The Analogue Soul: Where Screen Printing Lives
And then there’s screen printing. This isn't a reproductive process; it's a creative one.
Every single screen print is a hands-on, physical event. We don't spray dots of ink. We push a solid, tangible layer of ink through a mesh screen with a squeegee. Each colour gets its own screen, its own layer, its own pull. A five-colour print means the paper has been on my press five separate times, with me lining it up, mixing the ink, and pulling it through by hand each time.
The result is not a copy of something that exists on a computer. Each print in the edition is an original object, born from a very manual, and sometimes unforgiving, process. Each one has a ghost of the artist's hand in it—tiny imperfections and variations that aren't mistakes, but proof of life.
It's All in The Ink (And The Feeling)
This is where it really clicks. You can *feel* a screen print. Run your finger over the paper and you’ll feel the raised profile of the ink. It’s not absorbed into the fibres; it sits proudly on the surface. That physical presence gives the colours a depth and vibrancy that’s hard to describe. A solid block of orange isn't made of tiny red and yellow dots trying to trick your eye; it’s one pure, punchy layer of actual orange ink.
That’s what I fell in love with. The boldness. The texture. The way you can build an image, layer by layer, with pure, unadulterated colour. The work I create at Oli Fowler Art is completely shaped by this process. The graphic lines and flat planes of colour in my prints wouldn't have the same impact, the same physical punch, if they were made any other way.
A Giclée is a perfect photograph of a delicious meal. A screen print *is* the meal.
So, at the end of the day, neither is better or worse—they’re just fundamentally different things. One is about perfect replication, the other about manual creation. When you buy a limited edition screen print, you’re not just buying an image. You’re buying a small piece of a studio, a bit of the artist’s time, and an object with its own unique, analogue story told in layers of ink.
If you want to see—and hopefully one day, feel—the difference for yourself, have a look at the prints I have available. Each one has been through the wars on my press to get here.