Litho

Every week as my prof demos the process of lithography printmaking, I only realize more and more that it's as hard as a rock! (both figuratively and literally) Every step is incredibly involved and laborious, but it is without a doubt, a labour of love :)

My stone being grained :)

I think what I like so much about it is how challenging it is. Being a graphic designer today heavily involves a computer, shortcuts and all, which is convenient considering the tight deadlines that the industry thrives on. Everything needs to be pumped out according to multiple schedules; the client, the printer, the season, the event, the installers, or the designers, they all have a schedule that the process of design must adhere to. This means that more often than not, the art of design can easily get lost in translation. 

I've always looked at printmaking as a way to go back in time and learn where all the photoshop effects and illustrator tools originated from. Old school processes can help to learn about how to manipulate these tools, but better than that, it allows you to return to the fundamental Art of graphic design. And plus I miss creating things just because I want to. This is among the many reasons why I decided to take a post graduate minor program at OCAD for printmaking. 

Drying ze stone with medieval fan

Although Litho wasn't originally on the top of my list, it was the only class available to me at the time I registered, but I am so excited to be able to learn this art form. In my first class Lauren, my prof, was explaining to us that, the huge slabs of limestone that we will be labouring over for the next few months, are easily decades older than us. They are the same stones that the printing presses used to use to publish newspapers and is also the same material that slaves has spent years stacking together forming pyramids in Egypt that still stand proudly today after so many centuries. It's amazing, even just to imagine the life my stone may have had and all the prints it had created before I claimed it for the semester. 

I even like how mysterious it all is. once you've grained away layers of the stone to erase the previous image, you draw on it with greasy materials then etch your image into the pores of the stone by applying chemical processes to it. This will tell the stone where to take ink and where to repel it. It's like breathing art into a stone and bringing it to life, allowing it to repeat that image, which sometimes makes me feel like a mad scientist. Throughout the whole process, there are many moments where you make the image disappear just to see it come back which tells you whether or not you did it right. At the same time, not everything you do will come out as you expected. There's always a chance things will disappear or even appear out of nowhere, when you go to print.

It's like magic, just so exciting. I will post my first print when it is done :)