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Jrsquee
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« Reply #5240 on: April 06, 2011, 06:30:56 PM »

I took a few pictures of myself as I printed my stone yesterday! I've written up a little bit about what lithography is and how it works, some of you might find it interesting/illuminating. Czech my flickr page for other prints etc if you'd like.





This is the press I was using. We've got 4 litho presses in the shop at school (and several other etching presses). It looks like someone had been using this one to print an aluminum plate or a polymer prontoplate. Since the presses have a hard time going down far enough to get good pressure on thin plates, people will use a blank stone or these big metal plate backers to raise the surface. You can see the ink outline of the plate on the stone.





 
I had to move the stone off the press so I could get mine on there. The stones are super heavy slabs of limestone from this quarry in Solnhofen, Germany. This one was about the same size as mine - 30x24" and about 5 inches thick. Probably weighs around 200-300 lbs or so.






Here's my stone, with my image on it! It takes a long time to prepare and process the stones. You first grind down the stone with a levigator or smaller piece of stone with wet grit (you can see the sinks in the back, they're the things with the pipes laid across) until it's perfectly level - we have this big iron bar that we lay across the stone with a little piece of tissue paper underneath, and then you try to remove the tissue paper from under the bar in different spots. If it slips out easily, there's a low spot there, but if it tears/sticks, then it's level. Once it's level, you polish it with higher grits until it's real smooth. It can take anywhere from 2 - 6 hours to 'grain' a stone. It's quite a workout and pretty tedious, but it gets really zen after a while.

After the stone is grained, you can draw your image on it! Litho uses these special waxy crayons and pencils. They're pretty expensive (3-6 bucks a pop), but there's really no good substitute. Once you've got the image drawn, you process it with gum arabic and nitric acid to make the white parts hydrophilic and where you've drawn hydrophobic. Processing (aka 'etching' the stone) doesn't eat away the surface, it's a chemical reaction within the porous stone.






Here I am, inking my stone. You can see the big leather ink roller I've got balanced, and I'm wiping the stone down with water before I roll. When you wipe it down, the water soaks into the non-image parts and beads off the image. Since the ink is oil-based, it will only stick to the dry areas (aka the image) and will be repelled by the watery non-image areas. You have to work fairly fast so the stone doesn't ever dry out when you're inking.






And here's the print! I wish I had taken a picture of me operating the press, but whatevs. I was busy printing. If you take care of your stone, the image will last for basically forever in storage and you can print it basically forever too. Aluminum plates last for a really long time too, but polymer/prontoplates are only good for a few years in storage and only last for about a dozen prints.

Modern-day lithography is all computerized (press operation and getting the image on the plate) and mostly uses aluminum plates, but other than that it's the same process.

There you go! That's a brief introduction to lithography. The more you know, I guess...
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« Reply #5241 on: April 06, 2011, 08:50:18 PM »

Thanks, Jr. Informative!
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Nix
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« Reply #5242 on: April 07, 2011, 05:38:36 AM »

Czech my flickr page for other prints etc if you'd like.

Thank you for this. Giggle
Also, that stuff looks so awesome. It really makes me want to play with lithography a bit myself. I bet the barrier of entry (if more for tools and materials than anything else) is pretty high though.
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pgil
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« Reply #5243 on: April 07, 2011, 07:31:15 AM »

Nix: See if local colleges offer Printmaking classes. Probably the easiest/cheapest way to go. I've done the same process using polyester plates (but my prints didn't come out looking as good Sad ).
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Jrsquee
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« Reply #5244 on: April 07, 2011, 09:19:33 AM »

Yeah, polyester/prontoplates aren't as great as stones or aluminum plates. They're black/white only (no grey tones, really, unless you do some fancy crosshatching which doesn't always come out). They get used up pretty quick too. On the plus side, they're super cheap!

Nix: yeah take a look at local colleges and take an intro to litho class as continuing ed or something. It rocks (lol get it litho = rocks) and it's really fun.

[edit] I should say, rather, that it's just much harder to get good value gradations with prontoplates than stones, but not impossible.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2011, 01:02:45 PM by Jr » Logged
jwk5
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« Reply #5245 on: April 07, 2011, 09:58:43 AM »

More MS Paint speed-scribble fun...
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Pietepiet
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« Reply #5246 on: April 07, 2011, 01:25:19 PM »



JET SET RADIOOOOOO

Gonna add a background tomorrow, but wanted to show it already.

Man, I love these games so much
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andy wolff
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« Reply #5247 on: April 07, 2011, 05:26:58 PM »

great stuff as always, everyone. this thread is a great collection of cool arts



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« Last Edit: April 08, 2011, 07:23:33 PM by Andy Wolff » Logged

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« Reply #5248 on: April 07, 2011, 08:02:47 PM »

oooo, so purple
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« Reply #5249 on: April 07, 2011, 11:59:00 PM »

JET SET RADIOOOOOO
Man, I love these games so much
I agree so hard. You could've cropped away all the white/transparency though Wink
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Pietepiet
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« Reply #5250 on: April 08, 2011, 12:52:11 AM »

I agree so hard. You could've cropped away all the white/transparency though Wink

I know. I was lazy and still need to add a background in, so I didn't do it Tongue

[EDIT] I cropped it just for you!
« Last Edit: April 08, 2011, 04:54:06 AM by Pietepiet » Logged
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« Reply #5251 on: April 08, 2011, 05:02:22 AM »

JET SET RADIOOOOOO

Love the colours in this!
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« Reply #5252 on: April 08, 2011, 09:27:47 AM »

@Piet that's awesome :]. I wanted to point out you have an odd tangent on the hair/eyebrow
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« Reply #5253 on: April 08, 2011, 01:05:53 PM »




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« Reply #5254 on: April 08, 2011, 01:07:42 PM »

Andy- I don't know what that is, but it's purple and glowing; I approve.
Bones- I like the reflection; that's looking really nice so far (you are eventually finishing it, yes?).
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« Reply #5255 on: April 08, 2011, 02:57:16 PM »

Bones- I like the reflection; that's looking really nice so far (you are eventually finishing it, yes?).
That was a reflection? Good lord, it is so opaque that it really looked like two dudes making out or something. Maybe a tip would be to stop the reflection a lot earlier on, like in the middle of the face.
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« Reply #5256 on: April 08, 2011, 02:59:43 PM »

Andy- I don't know what that is, but it's purple and glowing; I approve.
Bones- I like the reflection; that's looking really nice so far (you are eventually finishing it, yes?).
I have till tomorrow morning to finish this + one other drawing.  Facepalm

Bones- I like the reflection; that's looking really nice so far (you are eventually finishing it, yes?).
That was a reflection? Good lord, it is so opaque that it really looked like two dudes making out or something. Maybe a tip would be to stop the reflection a lot earlier on, like in the middle of the face.

The counter is only like 5% shaded so far.

My tiny reference has a reflection which doesn't "stop"


« Last Edit: April 08, 2011, 04:34:15 PM by Bones » Logged

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Jrsquee
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« Reply #5257 on: April 08, 2011, 05:25:44 PM »

That dude's rather elongated. His left forearm is kinda long, as is his torso/back. Coming along nicely though!
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« Reply #5258 on: April 08, 2011, 06:51:28 PM »

The reflection is not good, we should see the face more from the underside
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« Reply #5259 on: April 08, 2011, 07:35:09 PM »

I should have shown the underside of the face, since I had done that with the hand but, it's too late to go back now, I'm not touching that general part of the piece anymore.
Since I have much to do by 10am and it's an 18 x 24 inch illustration, so it's not a small piece to finish by morning.  Facepalm

« Last Edit: April 08, 2011, 07:50:30 PM by Bones » Logged

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