Lithography

Lithography is a technique of printmaking that was developed in the 1790s by Alois Senefelder. Lithography is based upon the principle that grease and water don't mix.

Lithographic plates or stones have a surface texture that retains a thin sheen of water when they are wet with a sponge. An image is drawn or painted upon the dry surface with greasy litho crayons and a greasy ink called tusche. The image is "etched" (actually a misnomer- no relation to the other printmaking process called etching) upon the surface with acid and gum arabic, which is a kind of tree sap. A complicated process called rolling up the image is performed, which I won't get into. Basically the etching and rolling up processes simultaneously release the grease from the crayon and tusche ink, while fixing the image to the stone or plate.

A large ink roller is charged with a greasy litho ink. The plate (I usually use a plate rather than a stone) is placed on the litho press, wet down with a sponge, and the ink is rolled over the surface. The litho ink from the roller sticks only to the drawn and painted image, because the greasy ink is attracted to the greasy image on the plate surface, and repelled by the wet non-image areas.

When the plate is sufficiently inked up, a piece of printmaking paper is placed upon it and run through the litho press. My yellow cast-iron Fuchs and Lang litho press, which dates from the pre-1890s and which I restored to working order myself, is pictured here. The paper is pressed into the inked plate as it is run through the press, and the ink is transferred to the paper, resulting in a print or lithograph.

My color lithographs utilize a multiple-plate process. I draw a plate for each color-usually four plates such as yellow, red, blue, and black. The layered "plate" colors will yield the resultant colors- for example, red and blue layered make purple, and red, blue, and yellow layered make brown. Red, blue, yellow, and black layered make dark brown! The lightness or darkness of the individual plate colors can be varied as well.

The entire run of prints is printed with the first color. They are allowed to dry for a couple days. When the ink is sufficiently dry, the entire run is printed with the second color, and so on until all four colors are printed on all of the pieces of paper. The printing process takes a whole week! Each plate has to be registered perfectly with the piece of paper, and to all of the other plates. When the printing is finished, the edition of lithographs (I usually try for ten) are signed and dated, and the plates destroyed. Each print in the edition is an original work of art.

I was fortunate enough to receive a Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship grant to pursue lithography in 2001.

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