What exactly is a 'Hand Embellished Print'?

My work station full of supplies for hand embellishing prints on cradled panels

Hand embellished prints are a special piece of work made from a reproduction of an original piece of art. In this series of hand embellished prints that I am working on, I am colour laser printing my image onto rice paper or cotton rag paper. I am then mounting the print onto of the birch panel with acrylic medium and letting that dry. After it is dry and ready to go, I use a variety of watercolour markers, coloured pencil crayons, and oil pastels to do 'hand embellishing' or tinting and colouring ontop of the image to bring it to life.

'Radiant Fantasia' print being hand embellished

I love this process.... it creates a special 'one of' piece of art that my collector can enjoy knowing it has been painstakingly retouched with a variety of tools. I enjoy the layers of colour applied to give these pieces depth, and texture. It makes a print come to life with hand applied touches- plus I get to 'play' with my extensive collection of art supplies! My typical medium of choice is oil paint, this is what I use for my large scale paintings, but I get to pull out all sorts of art supplies with these print embellishments. For example; I dragged over 10 lbs of art supplies from Japan this spring- 5.5 of hand made oil pastels in Osaka! They have an amazing pigment load, are smooth and lovely to work with, and give my pieces a lot of character. I even found a box of florescent oil pastels! I use florescent oil paint, and these pastels match perfectly, the printer ink just doesn't quite look perfect... but after the hand 'painting' they do!

Hand Embellished prints in progress

Once the 'painting' is done, I spray a 'workable fixative' on the piece to 'lock in' the pastels and mica if used and let that dry. I then apply an acrylic medium over top and hand sign the piece. I paint the sides of the panel as a finishing touch. Volia! A beautiful oil painting reproduction that is technically a one of a kind art work but at an affordable price point.