A New Litho Buddy

    Well, there are 8 exams, 32 drawings, 23 lesson plans and an assortment of extra credit to grade between me and my studio.
    But, good news: I have another litho student. To make a long story short, she broke her leg (ei yi yi) in a rugby match and had to take an Incomplete for my class. Since she'll be working independently anyway, I offered her the option to do litho and she is interested in trying it. Yay for another graining partner.
     I've been waiting for the can of Senefelder's all this time, since November 12! I was just about ready to cancel the order, because I did another search and found the same ink at Takach, who would ship it in 1-2 days. I really wish I had shopped there before. But, it turns out that Graphic Chemical has been held up because they actually make the ink, and they have been waiting on a varnish they need to do it. So we've all been waiting on someone. I wonder how far back that goes.
    Anyway, here's the bright side: I know the ink will be fresh when I get it.
    And by the time I do, maybe I'll be re-charged and ready to tackle printing again. Only 63 things to go...

Three Level Stones :D

This makes me very happy.

   After the last time I grained, with no success, I was convinced I was missing a piece of the graining puzzle. It turns out I was, but it was only a matter of seeing the problem from the other side. I think I have the gist of it now.

   I'm so lucky because my excellent teacher Rebekah from my class at Zygote last summer is willing to help me long distance. And I'm talking really long distance, because she is currently in the middle of a two month long artist's residency in Taiwan. So bless her heart twice.

    I wrote to her with my questions about graining and she sent back three whole sets of drawings that detail graining patterns and which one to use under certain circumstances. That was my ticket.

     Today, we started fresh with two different stones. I now have a student working with me who is a true problem solver. That is another piece of luck, a couple times over, because he can think and he is tall and strong, two things that I am not. Litho takes quite a bit of muscle, and it sure was nice to have someone to take turns with. And to help carry heavy tubs of water.

     Admittedly, the stones were pretty level to begin with. By the time the previous images were grained out of the stones (one of them was very dark, so it took a while. I'll have to remember to keep better track of the cycles so we know what to expect), the smaller stone was level, but the big one on the bottom was low on the edges. I was kind of discouraged, because it wasn't like that when we started. We had made the stone worse! My student had to go and I sat down with a thump to think about it.

   Then came the aha moment. Instead of thinking that the edges were low, I should be thinking that the center was high.

   If you use two stones that have the same problem as graining partners, like two convex stones or two concave ones, used together they will even each other out. One of the stones I grained last time was convex, so I hauled it out and used it to grain Fred, the bigger stone on the left in the photo. I did three cycles of 100 grit, dried it off, and yay. A level stone.

     We'll polish them next week, and then we can start drawing. Two of the stones will be used for etching charts, one for crayon and one for tusche. My student gets to draw on Fred.

    It's slow progress, but we're getting there. I just need to remember to look at things from the other side.

Stone library shelf

Well, it was a busy week. The first week of school always is, but in addition, we finally got the litho stones moved into my classroom (yay for Planet Fitness!) and we settled on a design for the shelving unit that will house them. We have 28 stones, and the unit will hold 27 of them. The last one, (named Jabba because it is so big), will have to stay on the cart it has lived on for years.
    This is a CAD drawing of the design, made by our student assistant Joel.

 My colleague and Joel designed it, and I think it will be really strong. This shows the metal frame that will be mostly welded together. In addition, there will be plywood shelving on top of the horizontal bars. There will be three sets of these units, and they will be stacked in a corner of my classroom.

    Joel is the same student who asked me, "But what is it, really?" about the grid for an ellipse a few semesters back. He is also the one who 3D printed the torus knot for me so that I could figure out how to draw it. This time, he figured out how to keep the stress of the heavy stones on the metal structure, instead of expecting the plywood not to sag under their weight. I reckon our average stone weighs about 30 lbs, so multiplied by nine for each shelf is quite a load. It's nice to hang around with smart people :)

    I think we are just about ready to start graining stones.