How to make a lithographic print

Lithography works on the fact that grease and water repeal each other. I think a good way of explaining it is if you ever have a drop of butter or oil in your kitchen and try to remove it with water, you know how the water just kind of falls on the edges of the grease. That's basically what makes lithography work. Lithography, you print traditionally from a lithography stone, which is a special kind of limestone that is taken from one quarry in Germany. The first step of the process is that you want to grain and level the stone so it's completely level and have a fine grit on it that you can draw on. When you start your drawing, you use a lithography crayon that has a grease content in them or a toothbrush. You draw this on the stone and the artist creates their artwork. When the drawing is done, you start to process the stone to prepare it for printing. The first step of processing your stone and preparing it for printing is called the first etch. What we want to do is to start the chemical process that prepares your stone to be printed. After you've drawn your image, the stone is still sensitive to grease and we need to desensitize the stone by using gum arabic and nitric acid. We will be starting the chemical process. You're applying gum arabic onto the stone, which together with the limestone creates a layer that we call absorbed gum layer. The gum arabic and the nitric acid will together help the grease from the drawing material get penetrated into the stone and create a greasy reservoir directly underneath your drawing. This is where your printmaking ink will hold on to because grease and grease attract each other. After you've done your first etch, you want your stone to rest for at least an hour so that the grease can get settled into the stone. After you've been waiting and the stone has been resting, we are going to start the second part of the processing of the stone, which is to wash out the drawing materials and replace them with the printmaking ink. In lithography, we use a special printmaking ink. The first step to do when you wash out your drawing is to use turpentine to literally wash out and remove the drawing from the stone. At this point, you can only see a ghost image of the drawing you've made, and this is the grease that has been penetrated into the stone from the first etch. After that, you want to buff in a bit of the printmaking ink onto the stone and let the stone rest for about five minutes. After that, we will be using a leather roller to roll up the stone with printmaking ink. We sponge on the surface of the stone to create a thin layer of water, and this is when the absorbed gum layer is helping to hold on to the water. After you sponge, you want to straight away roll your roller with the printmaking ink onto the stone, which will attract to the grease that is already in the stone, and you can see your image building up again. After you have rolled off your stone, it's time to do the second etch. The second etch helps to really establish the absorbed gum layer to make sure that the stone is not sensitive to grease anymore. The second etch works in the same way as the first etch. You apply gum aerobic onto the stone, and you're also applying a gum aerobic mixed with nitric acid onto the stone. After you've done your second etch, you also want your stone to rest for at least an hour. But then, after the stone has been resting, you can start printing your stone. To print your stone, you need to have a special lithography press. You place your stone on the press, and you adjust the pressure for that stone, because all stones have different thickness. Then you want to wash out the ink that you have on the stone. You use turps, wash it out, buff in the ink you will be printing with, and then you roll up the stone in the same way as you do when you're rolling up to prepare it for the second etch. When you get the right blackness of the stone, you can start pulling prints. Between every paper, you need to re-ink your stone. When your prints start to get grey, you need to add more ink to your roller as well.