Bam Bam Grafix

Bam Bam Grafix LLC provides art services for the creation of museum quality prints. With over twenty years of digital imaging experience (fifteen years exclusive to the art community), painters and photographers draw upon our abilities to produce fine art originals and giclee print reproductions. Our prints have been on display in galleries such as the National Gallery, Smithsonian, Minneapolis Institute of Arts and private collections around the world.

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New! Direct print to wood.

Digital prints on wood is new for us and probably new for you too. We’ve been looking for a way to print directly on wood without having to acquire a new large format printer. We had also hoped that we could use our same ink-set that we use for printing on canvas and fine art paper to print on some kind of wood as a cool alternative medium. We checked with the usual print supply places first. Nothing… Our local hardware stores were a bust too.

Well, with some persistence and some help from a friend, we found what we were hoping for; a wood substrate that we can print on using our existing printers and ink-set :) We’ve worked with a few artists over the last three months printing all kinds of digital images on wood. The look is very distinctive and unlike anything we have been able to do before now. The prints really do a have a “wow” factor. We think these wood prints are going to be an exciting addition to our current print options. No doubt, our wood prints fall outside the normal fine art print and we think that’s a good thing.

We don’t know that we will be able able to keep an ongoing inventory of wood that we can print on (still working on the details), but we have enough now to do several print projects. We would like to hear from you if you are interested in an experimental print project on wood; especially sometime this spring. Send an email with the subject line “wood prints” to discuss the possibilities.

We’ll continue this post with some print examples soon…

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Fabric print material available...again

We’ve been printing on a poly-silk for several years…lots of it. Until recently we were always able to have an inventory of silk near by and ready to print. Last year we began noticing that our resupply time was taking longer and longer to replenish. While we haven’t received an official “we no longer manufacture this product” it seems to us that what is still available is being passed around from supply vender to supply vender on special order until it’s all gone. At least one vender has said that they no longer carry this product. There was a long time of trial and error before we found a fabric we liked to print on. Most fabrics were not compatible with our printer and inkset. So when we found a poly-silk that worked for us we were very excited. For the last year we have been testing other options and mostly found the same problems we discovered years ago; blurry images, unpredictable colors and just a hot mess of other problems.

As of this week our search is over. We found a great new fabric that prints up beautifully and has many of the same qualities that we are familiar with from our soon to be discontinued poly-silk. What’s even better is that the new prints look nearly identical to the old prints (same color with just a little change in density). All it requires is for us to adjust the image file to be the slightest bit darker. This should make a lot of artists that we print for happy to know that there’s no need to reproof on the new fabric.

So we’re back to printing on fabric…before we really even stopped :) Whew!

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Prints from supplied files? Yes we can!

Sometimes we get questions in stereo. Other times we get them in surround sound. Well, this one came in loud and clear from several people this week.

The question… “do/can we print from supplied digital files?” The question is more common now than ever before. We think this is true in part because more traditional illustrators are migrating to digital creation and “making art” on the computer. Photographers and painters have “been here, doing it”. So it appears that we are connecting with an extended part of the creative world. Also, there’s a lot of buzz about artists creating on the ipad and printing the files to huge sizes…mostly on canvas…yes, really…it’s being done. Anyway, back to the question. Yes, we can print from your supplied digital files.

The follow up question is usually “how big can I print?”. And that question is not so easy to answer. There are a few things to consider when answering how big a print we can make from a supplied file. First, what are the dimensions and what resolution is the file? Second, what kind of image was created? Images with mostly flat color fields will enlarge to bigger sizes and look nicer than small images with a lot of fine line detail. Also the material that the image is printed on can make a big difference. Canvas rather than paper can “hide” more of the imperfections that paper can show very clearly. The viewing distance will also have an impact on how large an image can be printed and still look good. All of these considerations can be easily answered by sizing up the digital file and printing a crop of the image in question. Then you can see if the digital file will look good as an enlarged print. Printing a proof is the best way to know how good a supplied file will look. 

Did you know that we will print one proof for free from your supplied digital file? Most of the artists we work with know this and now you do too.

Do you have a digital file that you think might look good printed on watercolor paper or canvas? Send us the file and we will give you a free consultation to review your print options.

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Canvas gallery wrap

Just a reminder that we can stretch gallery wrap canvas prints in custom sizes.

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The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure; it’s a little like making love, the physical act of love.

Francis Bacon

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Web updates

We've updated our website. Apart from the redesign, we have reopened our membership (for a limited time) again. Our price list has been replaced with an easy to use calculator. Now you can get costs for the exact size print you desire even if the size is an uncommon format. You can find our prices here. We have also combined our website and blog together under one address. Updates will be easier to post and learn about. Check it out and feel free to share it!

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Being an artist doesn't take much, just everything you got. Which means, of course, that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it's no big deal. They are one and the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it, I transcend all this meaningless gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission.

Hubert Selby Jr