Painterly Paper Lithography

Experience the magic of lithography!

Spend a fun, hands-on weekend making quick, cheap, colourful lithograph prints using photo-paper as a matrix - no specialist lithography equipment required! During this course you'll learn the basic principles of lithography, creating painterly hand-drawn images on photo-paper using acrylic paint and drawing ink. Plates are processed with gum arabic and coke, and once dry can be printed from straight away using oil-based ink and an etching press.

On day one we'll start off with some experimental mark-making to make a test plate, which you'll then print to get to grips with how the process works and what kind of marks you can produce. We'll also cover using photographic images, but we’ll keep the focus mainly on drawing. You'll then start planning and creating a multi-plate image, thinking about using positive and negative mark-making. By the end of day two, you'll have a small edition of A4-size multi-coloured, layered lithograph prints to take away, a new-found (or re-kindled!) love of print, and the skills and confidence to develop your work further using paper lithography.

This course is an excellent introduction into lithography for beginners who want to dip a toe into the world of lithography, or for those with some print experience who want to learn something a little bit different. You can make editions of 10+ and your plate will be cleaned ready to reprint again at a later date.

We've no doubt you'll catch the lithography bug and want to do more! You can then join LPW as a member to book time in the studios to continue to develop your skills. And if you want to continue your lithography journey, why not book onto one of our stone lithography courses as a next -step? LPW is one of the only open-access print studios in the UK with dedicated lithography facilities and technical support.

This brand-new weekend course is taught by artist and printmaker Kathryn Desforges www.kathryndesforges.co.uk, who was LPW lithography intern in 2012, and stems from her ongoing research into alternative, accessible methods of lithography. All the materials used on this course are widely available and low-toxicity.

About the Tutor

Kathryn Desforges is a UK-based printmaker who creates process-driven, contemporary artworks which explore her preoccupation with ordinary, overlooked and in-between places.

Her work germinates from a fragmented collection of drawings, photographs, memories and lived experience, and evolves through printmaking processes such as etching, lithography and woodcut, which enable a unique visual language.

Material is important – carving, scratching and sanding back metal and wood reveals and covers up, helping to piece together fragments of ideas, distill and refine, and keep the physical act of making at the core of her practice. What results are re-imaginings – pieced together from snippets and fleeting glimpses of her everyday.

Recent work sees Kathryn exploring woodcut, using repetitive, meditative mark-making to reflect movement and fluidity, and exploring three-dimensional space – allowing the work to come off the wall and exploiting the natural movement of washi paper.

Kathryn’s work is held in public and private collections in the UK, including the Tate Library artist book collection. She trained at Kingston University, and has undertaken artist residencies at Intaglio Printmaker, UK, Mi-LAB, Japan, and a Post Graduate Lithography Fellowship at Leicester Print Workshop. Ever-hungry to learn and develop new print processes, her practice has developed through a symbiotic relationship with her career as a printmaking technician and tutor."