Scuba Diver: main edition and Blue variants

Graffiti Prints lists the main Scuba Diver paper edition as sold out at £595. The signed edition of 250 measures 50 × 100 cm on 300 gsm Somerset Satin and combines giclée with nineteen-color screenprinting.

The Blue paper edition is a separate run of 50 with hand finishing and fourteen-color printing. Blue acrylic and corroded brass versions each have editions of five. Canvas works and studio proofs should not be treated as paper-edition variants.

Collector context

Scuba Diver is a useful example of how a Martin Whatson subject can move between a large paper edition, hand-finished variants and studio paintings. The 2023 main print combines giclée with screen printing, while other works bearing the diver title use different supports and methods. Understanding that family matters more than treating every Scuba Diver as the same image at another price.

A subject shared with the studio paintings

In the same year as the print, Harman Projects included Scuba Diver in Concrete Echoes, Whatson’s New York solo exhibition. The gallery’s works list identifies a wide canvas made with stencil, spray paint and acrylic and designated AP, plus a square Scuba Diver mini canvas numbered within an edition of three. These are contemporary versions of the subject, with their own format and edition identities. The canvas AP belongs to that canvas work, not to the 250-copy paper edition.

That distinction explains why a title match is only the beginning of a comparison. The panoramic print stretches the swimming figure across a broad field of graffiti; the square mini painting occupies a different format. The gallery record places the diver alongside other active figures, including surfers, skiers and climbers, making it part of a wider vocabulary of movement within Whatson’s 2023 work.

A hybrid print and a hand-finished alternative

GraffitiPrints identifies the main edition as giclée combined with 19-color screen printing. That is a mixed printing process, distinct from the Blue paper edition, described as a 14-color screen print finished by hand. The Blue version also uses a slightly different sheet size and a separate edition of 50. Those production details distinguish the two more reliably than the artist’s signature, which appears on both.

Transparent and metal versions

The Blue Acrylic edition changes the viewing surface again. Its image is printed in reverse on the back of clear acrylic, a construction the publisher describes as adding depth. The Blue Brass edition places the print on corroded brass instead. Each is an edition of five, separate from both paper editions.

The main print therefore occupies a specific position: a wide, mixed-process paper edition rather than a hand-finished Blue sheet, a rigid panel or a studio canvas. When comparing catalog descriptions, the combination of support, process, format and edition designation makes that identity legible. Its printed graffiti shares Whatson’s visual language with the other versions, while its method of production remains its own.

More Martin Whatson releases.

Source: official product or release details.