Learning Stone Lithography

This year I thought that I would try some different forms of printing. I was then asked by Mark my printing teacher if I would be interested in trying out some stone lithography in a group of others who were also interested. The process and the quality looked really appealing and intriguing so I thought I would give it a go. 

First impressions were really promising. There was a short introduction to the process and how to clean and prepair a stone for printing. The process turned out to be very long and repetitive but at the same time highly enjoyable.  It was a real learning curve, I learnt how to prepair the stone with  Arabic Gum, how to mix different acids to bring out the tones in the grease materials that we had to use to draw with.

Drawing on the stone was enjoyable, the only problem was that you couldn't rub it out because the stone picked up grease. I have to admit, I wasn't very happy with my drawing as it was my first one. The surface was really smooth to draw on, for this print I used ink and a grease based pencil. 

We were then demonstrated the correct way to print from a stone which we all drew on as a test. 

This is how my print turned out. I like the grainy texture that has came through to the surface by the grain of the stone. I'm not a big fan of the drawing but it was a great technique to learn. I don't think that I will do another stone lithography print any time soon because I work quite instantly and quickly, the repetitive nature to preparing the stone frustrated me a lot. I have been working a lot with waterless lithography which has a similar quality to the stone prints and is a lot faster and instant. 

This is a close up so you can see the grainy quality that came through in the dark areas due to the stone not having a smooth enough finish.