stone lithography

Fifty Years Ago – June 1967

Yes, it was fifty years ago, if not on this exact day, it was in this month during June 1967 that this picture was taken.

I had just made the lithograph shown in the photo, two states of its progress. It takes its title “Twentieth Century Fox with a Fantastic Plastic Four Speed Box” from a mash-up of music, pop, and car culture, and was the last print I made in California. It was hand drawn on stone, bleed printed with two transparent colors over black, on 15” x 11” Rives BFK in an edition of 20. Continue reading →

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Dark Star – hand drawn lithograph on stone

Dark Star – hand drawn lithograph on stone

Darkstar

Dark Star – lithograph, hand-drawn, on stone, that began as an investigation of opposites using black and white, pairing order and chance, a structured network in contrast with coarse and smooth textures emphasizing the grain of the stone. I approached the image using chiaroscuro, a manière noir method Continue reading →

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Stone Lithography with Rudolf Broulim

Stone Lithography with Rudolf Broulim

at the press in his Zwiindrecht, Belgium studio

Earlier this month, to celebrate the new year and share some images with friends, we brought out the old slide projector and pulled some slides from the archive. It was an evening filled with nostalgia, a hot lamp shining light through old transparencies, complete with dust and scratches, the sound of the fan, the aroma of hot dust, and to complete the experience, there was the obligatory stuck slide; we were lucky the bulb didn’t burn out as there were none to be had locally. All in all, it was a fun evening seeing these images again and sharing them with friends. It was also a reminder that the time had come to start that long put off scanning project. Now that scanning is underway I’ll be posting a variety of images, many shot with my favorite camera at the time, a Leica IIf, primarily using Kodachrome 25. These first images are in the atelier of master printer Rudolf Broulim, Continue reading →

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Lithography with Rudolf Broulim, Antwerp, Belgium

Atelier Rudolf Broulim, Antwerp

lithograph 15″ x 22″

An artist I met at Atelier Lacourière Frélaut, Hugo Besard, introduced me to Rudolf Broulim, a master printmaker who had left his native Prague and settled near Antwerp.  Rudolf has worked with many artists (including Jiří Anderle and Oldřich Kulhánek), producing stunning artworks, Continue reading →

Posted by Thomas Alix Johnston in Blog, Words, 0 comments