Just thought I'd share something different...
I'm taking a lithography course this semester (which, God willing, will be my last as an undergrad) and for the project thats due Friday we had to print an edition with at least 3 colors. Knowing damn well that much of what we see in print is made on an (offset) litho press, I decided to try creating a CMYK print... by hand.
Started with this photo I took at the European bike show I went to back in September:
Make some minor adjustments in photoshop, then split the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) channels into separate images and converted to halftone screened bitmaps. Printed each layer separately on a laser printer, then transferred it to my stone one at a time. Its going to be fairly pixelated as I was told for my first attempt at this to limit myself to 100dpi to minimized inking, bleeding, and scumming issues.
This is the yellow layer, already transfered to the stone, which was printed second.
To print in color, each print has to be run through the press on each color stone to build up the image. To maintain consistent registration, I printed the first layer (magenta) onto a piece of mylar and marked down the registration marks with a sharpie so I could transfer it the next color layer and therefore (hopefully) line everything up to avoid a moire pattern. Printed magenta first, then yellow, cyan, and black. Since I only had one stone, it had to be ground down to a smooth surface between colors, then transfer and etch the new color's image before I could ink it and run it. Levigating (grinding) the stone takes about an hour+, etching takes about an hour and a half of setup, process, and cleanup and then needs to set for a few hours and has to be done twice to properly set the image on to the stone. Roll up for etching and storage is done in black ink to better etch and be seen more easily, the only time color is on the stone is when printing.
A few test prints to check how well the stone inked for yellow before running the edition through and a test registration of yellow over magenta.
Red and yellow, berkeleyed the registration up a bit on this one
Cyan on a red test print, Cyan on a yellow test print, CMY test print (no black)
Black on a Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow test print plus a black-only print and the full CMYK test print.
The finished series of 12, which includes the Mylar fully printed, and a CYK test print.
One of the better finished prints:
compared to the digital image (scanned from film)
All in all its a pretty labor intensive process but damn I loved doing it. I started on Saturday and finished this afternoon, printed magenta on sunday, yellow on monday, cyan yesterday, and black earlier tonight, probably spent around 30 hours total working on it. The crappy cell phone pics, particularly of the final print, don't really do justice to the saturation and brightness of the prints. It looks very close to the digital image, minus the resolution in person.
CN: I spent a long time and a lot of work to print an image by hand that any cheapo desktop printer could beat with a click of a button and about 30 seconds of printing, but I had fun doing it.
