More Old Prints

There was once a mailbox theme.

This is a lithograph.



Lithography dates back to the mid 1800's and was extremely popular for advertising uses through the early 20th century. Your Newspaper of Choice is still printed this way.

The basic principle behind lithography is that oil repels water. The technique involves a great many steps, especially if you use a Litho stone (which I did not- litho plates are a lot more portable however, do not erase like a stone) so I will not go over them here. Just know that in essence, you put oil-based marks down, then magical steps later put ink on the oil marks you made, the ink sticks only to the oil marks, then print those onto a surface (paper, fabric etc).

This process really drives home what museum docents and cave enthusiasts everywhere have always told you- your hands and fingers have oils. And when you touch things those oils transfer from your hands to whatever you touched. In that same way those guys on CSI pick up finger prints off of wood floors and wine glasses, you too will be amazed when you roll on the ink to find that your print has perfect fingerprints or the classic (!) hand-and-wrist-resting-to-draw combo right in the middle of your glorious portrait or landscape.So don't forget! No touchy.