Marvin Plummer is an artist who creates wonderfully rich charcoal drawings of dogs. He found himself with an all too common dilemma when he decided to reproduce his work with an inkjet printer. How do you reproduce art digitally without compromising its integrity? And how do you prevent color casts in black and white reproductions?

The 36 year-old artist creates charcoal drawings based on black and white photographs of dogs. “Dogs have an uncanny personality that I relate to, and I’ve challenged myself to capture this on paper,” says Marvin.

With an upcoming exhibit featuring his dog drawings, Marvin wanted to make affordable art prints available to the public. He did not want to create digital art, just faithful reproductions of his work.

With an EPSON 4000 driven by a ColorBurst RIP, we at Rods and Cones provided the perfect solution. The EPSON inkjet, with UltraChrome inks printed on Fine Art Archival paper, is ideal for limited editions because it is cost efficient and does not compromise on quality. In fact, ColorBurst is one of the best solutions for printing black and white art or photography with an inkjet printer.

We used color management to produce the best customized proofs.

Photographer Tom Burke (Thomas Burke & Others, Santa Cruz) used a Better Light scan back camera to accurately capture high resolution scans of the artwork.

“The print quality is outstanding,” says Marvin. “I’m excited about the assortment of available papers because I can produce prints of my work that have the look and feel of the originals. Before, there was very little available for good, rich and neutral black and white prints. Getting help by a company like Rods and Cones, guarantees that I’ll get the best results possible and at the lowest cost.”