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The surface of a lithographic stone is a very seductive surface to draw on.
It's responsive and it's also sculptural. Because the stone in and of itself is receptive to water, so if I dampen the stone it absorbs the water, and it's also receptive to grease, which means it will suck the grease down in. It allows me to put drawing material down and then remove it with things like razorblades, an X-ACTO knife, sandpaper, so it allows you to draw in a more sculptural way rather than having the limitations of a piece of paper.
This is a lithographic stone with a drawing by artist Steve Johnson on it.
It was a drawing done with a lithographic crayon directly on the surface of the stone. This stone is made from limestone. It is completely open, as we call it, which means it's receptive to grease and water at this state.
Lithography is a method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with. Lithography, planographic printing process that makes use of the immiscibility of grease and water. The process was discovered in by Alois Senefelder of Munich, who used a porous Bavarian limestone for his plate (hence lithography, from Greek lithos, “stone”).
If I were to put my thumbs on the surface of the stone, that would become image area because of the grease from my skin. It's a fairly delicate drawing surface from that standpoint, but it's also a positive in the sense that every fine mark that you can put down with a greasy material will hold in that fidelity.
In this process it's what's called a first etch, and right after that we will remove the drawing material and apply printing ink to it, which is what's called proving the stone. Now the drawing material has a small amount of talc and rosin attached to it, and it's ready to be etched. We first apply the gum arabic to the stone. This is to start to establish the non-image area of the stone. What we're trying to make sure is that the whites of the stone stay that way and they receive gum arabic, which will help them receive water later on. Once the stone has begun to receive the gum into it, we can apply the acidified gum arabic in this case, which is TAPEM.
That acidification with tannic acid helps keep that gum arabic permanently bonded to the stone. I'm also being very gentle at this point as to not scrub or disturb the drawing material that's on the stone.
Once I've etched the stone, I'll remove some of that material and replace it with fresh gum arabic. This is what we call cooling the stone down. It's basically reducing the quantity of acid on the surface of the stone, so that when we buff in the gum arabic into a very thin and even sheet, we don't run the risk of having too much acid remaining on the stone. We use cheesecloth to buff this in very evenly. Next, we'll be washing this drawing material out with lithotine. It's a greasy solvent, which is a refined turpentine made specially for lithography. The drawing material will be replaced with asphaltum, which has also been thinned with lithotine, to create a greasy, very [anchor]-receptive base for the ink on the roller to replace it with.
At this point, your drawing will disappear. It's not actually gone, and what you can see is a residue or a ghost image as we call it there on the surface of the stone. That is where the stone is being converted to soap, or oleo-manganate of lime. When the drawing is finished, it is then dusted with french chalk — this helps to protect it during processing. The way in which the stone is processed depends entirely on the materials used to make the drawing, and the amount of grease in the stone. The stone is processed using gum arabic, sometimes with a very small amount of nitric acid added.
The stone is processed using gum arabic, sometimes with a very small amount of nitric acid added. Facebook Flickr Donate Twitter Vimeo. Many innovations and technical refinements have been made in printing processes and presses over the years, including the development of presses with multiple units each containing one printing plate that can print multi-color images in one pass on both sides of the sheet, and presses that accommodate continuous rolls webs of paper, known as web presses. You can see only a very small amount of ink has actually been transferred because we're starting to push ink into the stone first. Modern printing plates have a brushed or roughened texture and are covered with a photosensitive emulsion.
Nitric acid is sometimes added to the gum in order to stop the grease in the stone from spreading. The first etch is carefully applied to the stone with either a clean paintbrush or sponge. Once the whole stone is covered with gum, a clean sponge and then a clean rag are used to buff the gum down to a thin, even layer. Heat is then applied to dry the gum. The stone should then be covered and, importantly, left overnight to allow time for the gum to chemically change the stone and establish the image within the stone.
This step removes the drawing materials from the stone and replaces it with non drying black ink. First the stone is re-gummed with plain gum, buffed down to a thin layer and dried. This helps to re-establish the image and non-image areas and thins the gum layer to ensure enough of the drawing material is removed. Pure turpentine is then sprinkled and rubbed over the surface of stone — this dissolves and removes the greasy drawing materials.
The excess turps is wiped off with a cloth, and then a wet rag is used to remove the gum arabic from the first etch. A damp cloth is wiped over the stone in order to remove the excess water but keep the stone surface damp. Non-drying black ink is then rolled onto the stone using a nap roller, until the image in the stone is clearly visible, re-damping the stone between rolls to keep the surface from drying out.
Once the image is fully rolled up, the stone is then dried and dusted with french chalk, before a second gum arabic etch is applied. The gum etch is then buffed down to a thin layer and dried, and the stone should be left to rest for at least a few hours before proofing. When taking the first proofs from the stone, it is important to remember that the image will not print to its full potential until at least the 10th print — this is because the subtleties of the drawing will begin to show up after multiple inkings, so only after the stone has been thoroughly proofed is it possible to get a true idea of how the image will print.
First the stone is washed out and rolled up — as before. The stone is gummed and dried, then washed out with turps, and then the gum washed off.