Space Between: Developing Digital Lithography: IMPACT 08 The Artist as Explorer International Printmaking Conference

Space Between: Developing Digital Lithography Building upon the research that was completed for Developing Digital Tusche Wash for Photoplate Lithography – presented as a workshop at IMPACT07 held at Monash University, Melbourne in 2011 – this small curated exhibition of approximately fifteen prints explores the interface between traditional and digital techniques of printmaking and demonstrates the potential for a fully digitised approach to lithography.

Since participating in two international portfolio projects in 2008 that encouraged cross-disciplinary working, I have become increasingly interested incorporating digital methods of working with traditional techniques of stone and plate lithography. In 2011, working with the computer software programmes Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter 12, I was able to demonstrate how it is possible to develop digitally engineered tusche wash and how this can be applied on screen in a relatively authentic and lithographic manner.

Since Melbourne there has been opportunity to develop this process of digitising tusche further and to explore how lithographic prints can be made using both a combination of digital and conventional techniques as well as producing work that is conceived in wholly digital terms.

The work in this exhibition thus comprises of a range of images that trace the development of this research – from relatively early prints (2008) that have used basic cut-and-paste technology, to more sophisticated use of digital tusche wash drawn using a pressure sensitive graphics tablet, outputted on to film, exposed to plate and printed lithographically and finally, the most recent prints that have been conceived and printed entirely digitally.