Lithography Workshop

July 14th & 15th

Good soul Amy, an almost relative up here in Dayton, told me about this Lithography Workshop by the Dayton Printmakers Cooperative a while ago, and I said sign me up.

We got there with coffee in hand and our pencils sharpened ready to take notes. Nice small class – nine students with an expert on hand for every pair.

I (dumbly) hadn’t thought drawing would be required – but luckily I had access to this photo of birds from a journal entry back in 2004.

We spent the afternoon learning about the process and filling our aluminum plates with marks from the Lithographic crayons. They had a nice oil pastel feel and took kindly to the tooth on the plates. Not sure how to maintain sharp detail – but that’s for subsequent experimentation.

We let the images set overnight and returned the following day to run them through the press on newsprint and then a final on nice paper. It could very well be an edition of one, but the nice bit about lithography is that you can make a run and get a good lot from a single plate. I hope to make a separate page outlining all the steps when I can get a few more questions answered so I don’t provide false information.

Related: Unlike lithography, monoprints produce only one image, and the Dayton Printmakers Coop has a workshop in September. If you’re in the area, you might check it out. I hope to. Details here.

Some snapshots around the workshop, and a little video to boot:

Lithography Workshop on Vimeo.

Soundtrack in video: Manitoba “Thistles And Felt”