Stone Litography

This semester I have had printmaking along with painting and here are some pictures of the processes I have learned to work with, stone lithography.

Drawing and painting on the stone.

Etching the stone.

Final print.

Image on stone.

When I started printmaking I had not heard of stone litography before, and did not know how it worked, but I really like this process now – it is basically like drawing and painting. One thing I am still not used to (and that goes for all printmaking processes) is that the image will be mirrored from the original drawing.
Stone lithography was invented in the 18th century and was the first process to make it possible to “draw” and “paint” an image onto a flat surface. The basic of what you do are:

1. Draw on the stone with something greasy, like a litho crayon or pencil.
2. Add a little water to the stone, so the parts of the stone that are not greasy get wet.
3. Roll an oil-based ink onto the stone, this way the greasy parts will pick up ink.
4. Press a piece of paper to the stone to transfer ink from the stone.

There are more steps in the process than this, but this is the easy explanation. I will post more pictures of my final prints soon.