Epitaph for my landscape print...
Epitath doesn't sound good you might think, and you are right. Yes the print came out really nice when I printed it in blue on Tuesday but I had planned to pull a few more prints from that plate on Thursday in white on black paper.
At first I thought I had issues mixing the white ink - the consistency just never felt quite right. I actually threw out the whole batch of ink after I put it way too many different modifiers and had modified it beyond hope. The second batch was fine but when I did the wash-out and roll-up on the plate I noticed right away that something wasn't right. At first I wasn't sure if I just imagined it because - after all - this was my first litho I tried to print in white and a number of things are different when you do that. For instance, you don't rub up in asphaltum (it's dark so you don't want that on your plate for printing white). Instead you rub up with the actual white ink, thinned down with lithotine. But that just didn't look right. Did I do something wrong? Hard to say, so I pressed forward. I tried to wash out that thinned down ink just as you do with asphaltum, but not too much came off. Weird. So I tried to roll it up (which when you do it right tends to pull up those areas of ink where you don't want to have the ink/asphaltum. When I rolled up the plate it appeared as if there was just no image. Very strange. Just a white surface.
I won't bore you with too many details. The short story is: the plate was damaged beyond repair and I could not pull a single further print from it. And the kicker was: the mistake actually happened on Tuesday already when I did the first print run! And I really should have known better. Here is what happened:
When you archive a plate so you can print from it again you roll up with printing ink. Then let that dry, then do a few more steps to archive the plate. However... you do that only when you print in black. When you use color you do NOT under any circumstances want the ink to dry on your plate. Well, I was printing in blue. I rolled up the plate and then put it away over night. I had it right in my notes that I should not do that, but with the stress I had on Tuesday I mixed up my notes and instructions or so that was the death of that plate. When I started to wash out that (dried) ink, I had to use a lot of lithotine and then also lacquer thinner and that damaged the gum mask on the plate. Or rather: it just eliminated it. Indeed, the plate rolled up solid white because there was - in essence - no image left on the plate. I had literally eradicated the print on the litho plate...
So that landscape which was so much work to draw will remain a (very) limited edition print. Sad. It probably was my best lithography so far.
At first I thought I had issues mixing the white ink - the consistency just never felt quite right. I actually threw out the whole batch of ink after I put it way too many different modifiers and had modified it beyond hope. The second batch was fine but when I did the wash-out and roll-up on the plate I noticed right away that something wasn't right. At first I wasn't sure if I just imagined it because - after all - this was my first litho I tried to print in white and a number of things are different when you do that. For instance, you don't rub up in asphaltum (it's dark so you don't want that on your plate for printing white). Instead you rub up with the actual white ink, thinned down with lithotine. But that just didn't look right. Did I do something wrong? Hard to say, so I pressed forward. I tried to wash out that thinned down ink just as you do with asphaltum, but not too much came off. Weird. So I tried to roll it up (which when you do it right tends to pull up those areas of ink where you don't want to have the ink/asphaltum. When I rolled up the plate it appeared as if there was just no image. Very strange. Just a white surface.
I won't bore you with too many details. The short story is: the plate was damaged beyond repair and I could not pull a single further print from it. And the kicker was: the mistake actually happened on Tuesday already when I did the first print run! And I really should have known better. Here is what happened:
When you archive a plate so you can print from it again you roll up with printing ink. Then let that dry, then do a few more steps to archive the plate. However... you do that only when you print in black. When you use color you do NOT under any circumstances want the ink to dry on your plate. Well, I was printing in blue. I rolled up the plate and then put it away over night. I had it right in my notes that I should not do that, but with the stress I had on Tuesday I mixed up my notes and instructions or so that was the death of that plate. When I started to wash out that (dried) ink, I had to use a lot of lithotine and then also lacquer thinner and that damaged the gum mask on the plate. Or rather: it just eliminated it. Indeed, the plate rolled up solid white because there was - in essence - no image left on the plate. I had literally eradicated the print on the litho plate...
So that landscape which was so much work to draw will remain a (very) limited edition print. Sad. It probably was my best lithography so far.
posted by Andreas at 12:53 PM
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