My First Lithograph

I have neglected my blog for a while, but I'm back again. I am currently taking a workshop in lithography at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking and yesterday I pulled my first prints. How exhilarating to have gone through that series of rather obscure chemical processes involving stone, grease pencils, tusche, gum arabic, and acids and in the end pulling a print from the surface of a stone! I wasn't sure I was going to like lithography because I feel I have so much less control over the image than I do in etching, but I actually really enjoy the process.

Homage to Chagall - Over the Town.

Lithograph.

20cm x 20cm. 2013.

As the title indicates, the image is obviously inspired by Marc Chagall's painting and print Over the Town. I recently read a novel about Chagall by Barbara Krause, and I still have so many of the images floating around in my head (more floating!). I think there is no other artist who captures the wonderfulness and the magic of love quite like Chagall does and where else does love take us but into that space between heaven and earth. 

My image in the lithograph is taken from a detail of a much larger etching I'm currently working on (more about that very soon!) which is finally a piece about Minneapolis. Long story short, my husband and I met and fell in love in Minneapolis almost ten years ago, so of course I had to somehow fit that in with my Minneapolis print. I don't like working with new images when I learn a new technique, so I decided to translate this detail into tusche washes and crayon lines. Just for the fun of it, here's the stone with the drawing on it.