So far in my barely started Pronto Plate Lithography journey, I have been heat-setting all my plates in the oven. 3 mins at 250 degrees. Yesterday I decided to see what I could make work without heat-setting the plate. I decided to test Sharpies, my Zig marker, and a china maker.
On the first plate I used the Ultra Fine Point Sharpie to make my drawing. I then grabbed the standard Fine Point Sharpie and went over the dark areas and some of the lines.
As you can see, the lines drawn with the Ultra Fine Sharpie didn't pick up any ink. I wasn't surprised as I think that I had the same issue on one of my earlier plates. So after a couple attempts on newsprint, I set that plate aside as I didn't think it was going to get any better.
The second plate was drawn with the Zig calligraphy marker. I used both ends and then went in the china marker to shade some areas:
For the third plate I only used the china marker:
Yeah, that works.
In fact, the china marker works almost too well. That plate picked up a lot of ink!
So what did we learn? Toss the Sharpie Ultra Fine back in the drawer. There is no need to heat-set a regular Sharpie, the Zig marker, or the china maker drawing. And the china marker drawings need fewer passes of the charged brayer. Those babies are gonna take a while to dry.
Next up - brush pens and india ink. And I'm still trying to find a ballpoint pen that works.
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