Lithography introductory workshop

This week's workshops were in the lithography studious. The artist that I've chosen to do my pastiche on printed using lithography, so I've decided to do the same. What you see above is one of my final prints on off-white Somerset Satin paper. I hope to add a bit of colour to it eventually. This time too I remembered to take my camera along so you can see a bit more of the process.

Below is what my drawing looked like (you can see the original sketch here). I enlarged my original sketch using a photocopier, then dusted underneath with a red powder called "dragon's blood". Using it like a form of 'carbon paper', I transfered my sketch onto an aluminium plate. I then drew directly onto the plate using lithographic crayons, and special ink called "touche".

This morning we treated the plates with rosin (to preserve the fines lines), talc (to help the gum arabic to adhere to the plates) and gum arabic with phosphoric acid (which makes the non-drawn on bits of plate repel ink and attract water). After the gum dried, we washed all the crayon and ink off using something called "wash out". Below is my freshly washed plate.

Here's our plates on the old 1920's newspaper proof printing press.

We then learnt how to wet the plate and ink it up - see how its started to pick up ink on the dress where I had painted with "touche"?

The ink gets picked up on the 'blanket' on the roller of the press - it's basically a PVC-coated drum of fabric.

And then prints onto your paper which has been placed next to (not on top of) the plate. Below is my first print (proof). After several more applications of ink and printing, the dress ended up taking on much more ink and thats what you can see in the final print at the top pf this entry.

Next week, relief printing ...