Week Four - Etching my first stones

This weeks blog entry is going to be a longer one as I finished the first two drawings I have been doing as experimentation on my stones, so I have a lot to recap on.

The first two pictures below show the start of a new lithograph, this time instead of sketching the portrait with mostly crayon like I did with my first stone, I wanted to try and create a more fleeting, smoother looking portrait that I have been thinking about in regards to the work of Gerhard Richter which I mentioned in a previous post. So to do this I started with a simple outline of the face (I am using a reference image of my dad) and then used a touche wash over the darkest areas, once that had dried I used a lighter touch wash over the rest of the face. To then create a contrast between the portrait and the background I used drawing in, painting it on in circular motions around the portrait and also encroaching parts onto the face. It will be interesting to see when it prints how effective this technique will be carrying forward with my work.

Above is one of the finished stones before etching, to prepare for etching I had to look at both portraits and determine the strength of the aid solution that would be needed to etch different parts of the drawing. We determined a need for 3, 6, and 9, 3 being used on the lightest parts of the portrait and then 9 being used on the darkest. Before applying this both rosin and talcum powder had to be rubbed over the drawing, then I applied gum over the whole drawing. Between each application of gum I brushed the different strengths of acid solutions to the parts of the drawing we had predetermined to need it. After this the stone was wiped carefully with a cheesecloth and the stone had to be left overnight until it was ready to be inked up.

The above picture shows the the drawing after the acid solution and gum was applied, the next day we then used turp on the image, which removes the image but image is preserved by the absorbed grease in the porous limestone (https://www.britannica.com/art/printmaking/Lithography) . Then using a mix of two inks, one softer and one harder that was applied to the stone with a roller and gradually builds up the image to what it has become in the pictures below.

Next week I will be printing the stones and this will help me move forward a bit more with my work to help understand how the images look when printed with different drawing techniques.