Museum: Techniques Litho-type Print

International Museum of Print and Clay

Litho-type print Technique:

The following is information on a laser printer or copy machine print reprint process. It has been called "the poor mans litho process". This is the text of a e-mail from Don Santos. Please e-mail me and let me know how this works for you.

Please scroll down this page for a how to do and an update:

VISCOSITY TRANSFER *** PRINTMAKING ONTO CLAY
Materials List
1. Gum water: Either Gum CMC or Gum Arabic. Mix 100 grams per one gallon of
hot water, mix well and let sit over night.
2. Image on paper. Must be the result of a photocopy. Regular weight
photocopy paper works fine but 24 or 26 pound paper works a little better.
3. Three pans or small buckets for water.
4. At least three small cheap sponges of fine texture.
5. One large fine textured sponge.
6. Two 3 inch brayers (soft).
7. Linseed oil in small bottle so as to add a drop at a time.
8. Vegetable oil.
9. Simple Green organic cleaner.
10. Small sheet of glass for mixing ink.
11. Untextured and smooth formica table top, large formica covered bat or
another sheet of glass larger than the images you are using.
12. One sharp plastic putty knife for each color of ink.
13. Rags and paper towels and for clean up.
14. Slabs of clay. Soft leather hard with all fabric texture removed.
15. Thin waterproof gloves.
16. Ceramic Glaze Stain or Oxide.
        The following ones I have had success with.
                Mason Stain # 6371 Dark Teal Blue
                Mason Stain # 6600 Best Black
                Degusa Stain Red
                Degusa Stain Orange
                Degusa Stain Yellow
                Red Iron Oxide
                I have not gotten any green Mason stain to work.

PROCESS
1. Prepare slabs ahead of time. Remove fabric texture for greater detail.
2. Prepare three pans. Gum water clean, Gum water dirty and water.
3. Prepare ink. Using a putty knife, mix stain with linseed oil on a glass
surface to a thick yet fluid consistency. Be sure to mix enough pigment to
make the ink too thick to flow. Then add just enough oil to make it flow.
This insures the highest saturation of color.
4. Clean and moisten a flat smooth surface (formica or glass) and apply
photocopy.
5. Moisten photocopy with clean gum water, let set for 30 seconds. Smooth
out wrinkles.
6. Flood photocopy with clean gum water.
7. After paper is saturated, (about 1 or 2 minutes) remove excess with
clean gum water sponge. Blot with large clean water sponge.
8. Make final addition of oil to ink if necessary. Roll out ink with brayer
in two directions perpendicular to each other. Mix ink in this fashion
until ink has even small texture and makes a hissing sound when rolled.
This is by far the most important step in this process!
9. Roll ink onto brayer and apply ink to photocopy. Do not worry about
getting too much ink on the white areas of the photocopy. Be sure your
image is heavily inked.
10. Flood paper with gum water from the dirty gum water pan to clean and
remove excess ink. You can be fairly vigorous with your cleaning.
11. Blot paper with big sponge using clean water (no gum) to remove excess
liquid.
12. Carefully pick up paper. Place on a flat slab. You can use a curved
slab if it i curved in only one direction. Otherwise the paper will
wrinkle.
13. Blot with clean sponge then press lightly with a clean brayer.
14. Wait 15 minutes before lifting a corner to see if the print has worked.
If you are going to build with it right away leave paper in place to avoid
getting print dirty . If not, remove paper wait another fifteen minutes and
cover with absolutely dry thin plastic.
15. You cannot spray or moisten the print at all or it will run. After
bisque firing it is more durable but can smudge if handled to roughly.
16. Remove any paper before bisque. Do not worry if some small bits remains
stuck. It will burn off in firing.
17. Clean up all ink, first with vegetable oil then, Simple Green. Pay
particular attention to the brayers.
NOTES
1. Ink cannot have any additions of clay or you lose viscosity and the
ability to transfer.
2. I suspect raw cobalt carbonate and chromium dioxide would work but the
danger of heavy metal poisoning through the skin is extremely high.
Commercial stains are fritted and far safer.
3. Transfers can be made to wet clay in any state. Bone dry and to a
limited extent to bisque works as well.
4. Overlapping can be done successfully on wet clay.
5. A plaster bat cast on glass might be used to print onto then slip poured
on top to pick up the image. If the kinks can be worked out of this method
you would be able to print text without reversing it first.
6. If you leave the paper in place until it has less water than the clay it
will suck the pigment off the clay.

6/10/00 We tried this technique today in my class and after a few false starts made it work.
The following pictures are for your information. The first t problem we had was that the ink was too thick and tore the surface off ot the paper when it was rolled on. Thinning the ink solved this problem. problem. Problem # 2 was we had too thin of a sheet of paper. See Don's comments about the paper weight. I will add updates as we explore this Process. Les Lawrence

	Viscosity transfer print on to a Glazed tile.(left) Paper printing plate on the right.

Tile surface	Paper surface