Looking for a Large Scale Printer

**kennygeeze** · March 1st, 2010, 03:41 PM

Hi,
I'm looking for a large scale printer that can print my drawings on watercolor paper for the purpose of then painting them with watercolors and acrylics.

I'm finding lately that I'm wasting a lot of time just with tiling a bunch of printer papers together and then using the graphite transfer method to get my drawing on the surface that I want.

I also tried out Donato's method where he went to a print shop and got his drawing printed on paper he provided using the store's architectural printer.
The professional print shops around here are too slow (requiring at least an overnight to do it) and often try to grossly over-charge me. $60 bucks just for essentially photocopying a drawing onto a surface I provide. It's definitely not some big photo quality poster print I'm after... yet they try to charge like it is. It's just a line drawing.

After a few paintings at that price I could probably just buy my own printer. The issue is the price...

I'm not looking for some fancy super-awesome high quality poster printer that costs thousands of dollars. I just want my drawing basically photo-copier quality on the watercolor surface.

Any suggestions for printers?
I found a couple that are in the $400 to $600 dollar range... however they're inkjet so I'm thinking painting over them with a wet brush would immediately smear it around?

I bet a monochrome printer would work great.

Thanks for the help!

Ken

**abouts** · March 2nd, 2010, 01:30 AM

How to maintain this printer?

**Pandragon** · March 4th, 2010, 08:42 PM

Just how big do you want to go? I LOVE my Canon Pixma Pro 9000. It can take any kind of paper imaginable and prints up to 13x19 borderless. Epson makes a similar printer, but I am not sure what model.

**kennygeeze** · March 5th, 2010, 02:05 AM

Thanks for the suggestion.... that canon one looks like a great printer!

It would be awesome if I could print 18 x 24, but that seems like a pretty big price jump. 13 x 19 might work for me... I'm often drawing my sketch on a pad of 14x17 so at least I'm familiar with the size.... sorta

Do you just make prints with your canon or do you print line-drawings for paintings?

**tensai** · March 5th, 2010, 07:50 AM

Before buying anything perhaps it makes sense to check if your prints will be waterproof. Dye based inks will bleed when worked over with water(colours).
Look for printers that use pigment based inks as they are often/(always?) waterproof.

edit -
I have a large pigment ink printer but I don't like to run my watercolour paper through it (mostly because I want the lines on the final piece to be done by hand). I either re-draw my sketch on the paper freehand, or use the light box.

Alternatively, you can not scan, then print, then tile, but just sketch on your final work size and use graphite transfer directly from that. Really doesn't take that much effort/time.

Good luck with it.

**shiroboi** · March 5th, 2010, 12:53 PM

Maybe I can throw my hat in as I come out of the sign industry. Your standard injets that are water soluable would NOT be a good solution. Even if you use a large format HP or epson printer, its the same technology and won't work well. That leaves you with Solvent, UV, Laser or Dye sublimation. I've never seen a laser that could produce much larger than 11x17. The cost of most machines that can do that are in the thousands of dollars. I think you'd be better off having them printed by a shop. Most sign shops are running Solvent printers now. You could try there as the prints would be waterproof and they can print on rolls of paper. You could cut your costs big time by providing them good artwork and maybe even buying your own roll of material up front.

**mickeymao** · March 5th, 2010, 07:21 PM

I use a Canon S9000 and yes, the ink bleeds when you paint over it. For this reason I either print the rough sketch super-light and pencil/ink over it before painting, or I print reversed on the back of the paper and put it on a lightbox to paint/draw on the front.

If would love a large-format laser printer (one that doesn't cost a mint), but I haven't seen such a thing.

**tensai** · March 6th, 2010, 04:27 AM

The A3+ Epson 2200 (link) and the newer and bigger Epson 3880 (another link) both use pigment inks that will not bleed. I have the 2200 and can confirm this. The 3880 is expensive and wouldn't make sense except if you want to do A2 fine art prints yourself as well. If you see the amount of ink it comes with it is actually pretty cheap though.

Again, I wouldn't buy one just for transferring, but if you want to a very good A3+ printer take a look at the 2200 on e-bay or something.

**mickeymao** · March 6th, 2010, 10:47 AM

So the Epson inks won't bleed even when printing on standard paper (i.e. not special inkjet paper)? Interesting!

**Viridis** · March 6th, 2010, 11:01 AM

Yeah, Epson inks are waterproof. I was actually trying to do some inkjet transfers for a printmaking class and had a problem because of it. (I literally printed a page and ran it under my kitchen sink-- no bleeding or running at all.) And that was just on a crappy Stylus C66, and low-grade Xerox glossy paper.

**kennygeeze** · March 6th, 2010, 03:38 PM

Before buying anything perhaps it makes sense to check if your prints will be waterproof. Dye based inks will bleed when worked over with water(colours).
Look for printers that use pigment based inks as they are often/(always?) waterproof.

Thanks for the warning, Tensai. I'll see what I can find.

Alternatively, you can not scan, then print, then tile, but just sketch on your final work size and use graphite transfer directly from that. Really doesn't take that much effort/time.

Yeah, that was an acceptable method when I was back in art school. Currently I have a day job with a long commute that I just have to put up with. I find that when i work on personal work I use up an entire evening or more just transferring my drawing. I'm trying to speed up the process

Thanks for the suggestion though

Maybe I can throw my hat in as I come out of the sign industry. Your standard injets that are water soluable would NOT be a good solution. Even if you use a large format HP or epson printer, its the same technology and won't work well. That leaves you with Solvent, UV, Laser or Dye sublimation. I've never seen a laser that could produce much larger than 11x17. The cost of most machines that can do that are in the thousands of dollars. I think you'd be better off having them printed by a shop. Most sign shops are running Solvent printers now. You could try there as the prints would be waterproof and they can print on rolls of paper. You could cut your costs big time by providing them good artwork and maybe even buying your own roll of material up front.

Thanks Shiroboi. I'll see if I can find the shop you speak of in Toronto. So far kinkos-like print shops haven't been very cooperative.

I use a Canon S9000 and yes, the ink bleeds when you paint over it. For this reason I either print the rough sketch super-light and pencil/ink over it before painting, or I print reversed on the back of the paper and put it on a lightbox to paint/draw on the front.

If would love a large-format laser printer (one that doesn't cost a mint), but I haven't seen such a thing.

Thanks Mickeymao
Cool, so I might get one then. Thanks. I went to staples business depot and they told me that it takes 8 ink cartridges at $20 a piece. How many prints would you say you can get out of it before you replace the cartridges? I guess printing a light transfer drawing wouldn't use all that much ink?

Also, thanks for the other printer suggestions Tensai. I'll take a look at those too.

Thanks Viridius, I'll look into those as well.

Thanks everyone

You've all given me a lot of think about/research.

**Black Spot** · March 6th, 2010, 05:03 PM

Why not print it out big and trace it. You're spending more time and money looking for other solutions to save 20 minutes after you've scanned and printed.

**kennygeeze** · March 6th, 2010, 05:31 PM

Originally Posted by Black Spot

Why not print it out big and trace it. You're spending more time and money looking for other solutions to save 20 minutes after you've scanned and printed.

So I'd have to pay for a large print and then still trace it? With the print shops around here, no thanks. Far easier to just get the thing printed on the surface I'm working on

-- that is if I can find an affordable option.

At the illustration master class I used Donato's method:

http://www.donatoart.com/technique/m.../mounting.html

.. and the result was both far superior and faster (as well as easier to paint over too) The 'freshness' of the original drawing was used in the final rather than just a hasty trace.

If the printers around here want to charge me $40 -- $60 just to enlarge my drawing I might as well buy a $500 printer and do it myself. At IMC I was in Amherst so the printer there seemed to know what I wanted/what they were doing fairly easily. Not sure what's wrong with the ones in Toronto...

**Zirngibism** · March 8th, 2010, 05:02 PM

I recommend the Epson R1900. The inks don't bleed and it can handle paper up to 120 lbs (I think there's a way to manually adjust it to allow thicker though.)

Only problem is that is goes through ink like crazy, and the ink is pricey. So for everyday color printing you might want to use something else.