Attempting Kitchen Lithography
Notes:
While browsing through Inkteraction – an international networking website for printmakers—I came across a posting called Kitchen Litho and simply because I have a kitchen, I became interested. Then I became fascinated. I had to try this, so I rounded up some tin foil, oil, soap, soda (coke, Pepsi or Diet Dr Wow was among my collection to try) and trough many hours of trail and error, I managed to get 3 small proofs of different marks I had made on the foil. I am still in the process of finding the right amount of etching time, the right type of soap, and ink.
Here is what happened with my first tries.
I pored the cola over the image – I found out my soap did not have enough vegetable oil in it. (It needs to have at least 75% oil in the soap to work right). I found Diet Dr Wow to work the best. It must have the most phosphoric acid in it. (I am going to do some research to find out the amount of this acid found in sodas in the near future). I kept wiping my image away with the water and wet sponge after the cola poring. I gave up on the soap idea and used a yellow oil pastel. I had some luck with this was able to ink up most of the marks I had made on the foil. I printed it by hand with a spoon on BFK. In brief, here are some points on my first attempts at kitchen litho.
· Taped foil to baking tray – note, baking tray was cleaned with simple green to remove grease but this is not to say that some grease was still on the tray and could have transferred onto the foil with the sponge.
· Drew image with soap
· Used hair dryer to dry soap. (About 30 seconds)
· Poured coke-cola over image (enough to cover entire surface area of foil)
· Poured water over image (no wait time)
· Wiped down with wet sponge – (sponge was heavy and wet almost dripping) – image disappeared
· Poured a little 100% vegetable onto foil and rubbed with paper towel (this is the step that is supposed to remove the image)
· Wiped again with wet sponge.
· Inked up image
o Foil turned solid color –did not pick up any of the image I had drawn on the foil.
Tried this same process over and over changing the amount of moisture on the sponge and the type of cola.
Dr Wow worked the best and oil pastels worked good.
The amount of pressure used when wiping the foil should be minimal and I found the sponge should be very clean and just damp. I had success when I kept the foil wet between rolling on the ink. Also, when inking up the image, I had better luck with using strokes that continued the same way once, then sponge then roll in same direction, then sponge.
Classes stated up this week and tomorrow I have three hours in the studio to further experiment and hopefully get a decent image on paper. I will keep this updated with my progress.
In the mean time, I need to buy some Marseille soap. I really like the idea of being about to use the soap with paintbrushes.
Here is a link to a site I just found that is going to be very helpful for me as I continue to figure this all out.
