Lithography

The fascination around printmaking techniques is unending, and recently when someone asked, “What exactly is a lithograph?” one felt this was the best place to answer.

The fascination around printmaking techniques is unending, and recently when someone asked, “What exactly is a lithograph?” one felt this was the best place to answer. Lithography is considered the art of drawing on stone: Lithos meaning stone and grapho means to write.

One of the early methods of printing date back to 1796, when it was mostly used to make reproductions of images. Whoever the author of the method, it soon became popular across the world, that is,before offset printing was invented.

In the modern context, after the printing press, lithography was primarily used for artistic purposes since the process is very tedious and is not suitable for commercial purposes. This method requires grinding a large limestone until the surface is soft and smooth. Then, the artist draws upon the stone with oil-based ink. The stone is then covered with an aqueous solution of gum Arabic, weakly acidified with nitric acid. The non-image or blank part of the stone is ready to accept water. The image is bound by turpentine and the stone is then washed . The wet stone is ready to accept the printing ink that is applied on the stone with a roller. The water repels greasy ink while the drawing, which is also oily and water-resistant, accepts the pigment that is rolled on.

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The image is now loaded with ink and ready to print on paper. A large printing press is used to roll the stone against the paper and print the image drawn on the stone. A good lithograph gives up to 20 prints. Artists like Eugene Delacroix and Théodore Géricault popularised the lithograph in the 17th and 18th century.

In today’s day, lithography is not thriving the way it use to and this is mainly because of technical difficulties. The weight of the stones can often be daunting.

Demystify art, e-mail georgina.maddox@expressindia.com

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