Lithography • Tracy Dudley

It’s almost impossible to begin a discussion of lithography without mentioning the fact that grease and water don’t mix, because that principle is the basis of lithography.

Invented in the late 1700’s by Aloys Senefelder, Lithography makes use of greasy ink on a flat surface that has been specially ground and polished. The artist draws the image in a greasy substance on the surface and the stone or plate is either etched or set chemically, often with gum arabic or an equivalent chemical, which will not adhere to the greasy areas but treat the ‘undrawn’ areas. After this process, the greasy areas of the stone or plate accept ink and repel water. At the same time, the etched or chemically treated areas repel ink and accept water. The surface is then inked and washed with water causing the greasy areas to retain ink while the treated areas repel it.

So, when the paper is placed on the inked and washed plate, the areas of the greasy ink will deposit their image on the paper.

Lithography (the name comes from litho, the Greek word for stone) is a planographic printing method. The image is printed from a flat surface. The chemicals don’t eat away at the plate, as they do in etchings. They simply change the surface, allowing it to either accept or reject ink.

Original, hand-pulled lithographs are first conceived by the artist as something to be printed. They are not images adapted from other media. The image is created directly on a printing plate. Traditional lithographic images are created on stone plates or metal plates.

Because the artist draws directly on the printing plate lithography allows the artist a broad range of style and experimentation. Lines can be drawn thick or thin; tones can be rich or dry. At times it can be hard to distinguish a lithograph from a drawing, a painting, or a collage.

An original lithograph is an artistic creation; instead of creating a painting with brush and oils, the artist had to master the technique and temperament of the plate and the inks as "tools" to create his/her work of art.

Original fine lithographs should never be confused with offset reproductions, which are simply copies of something else. Newspaper or magazine printings are common examples of the offset process, but limited edition reproductions also are printed on offset presses. It is important to know which process was used to make a print.

The colors in hand-pulled lithographs are solid, while the colors in offset lithographs are made up of thousands of tiny dots. A quick way to tell the difference between the two is to look at each through a magnifying lens. The dots of the offset lithographs will quickly be evident.

An oil painting can be described as a "one-of-a-kind" original work of art. Lithographs often are called "multiple" originals. From the plate or stone, the artist can get more than one print, yet each is an original work of art, not a copy or reproduction. Since each is printed one at a time, one color at a time, each is the "end product" of the artist’s original intent.