'Lithograph of Water made of thick and thin lines, a green wash, a light blue wash and a dark blue wash' belongs to a series of eleven lithographs made with the Tyler Graphics print studio in upstate New York. The subject is Ken Tyler's own swimming pool which was the subject of a large body of paper pulp works which Hockney made with Tyler over a 3 month period in the summer of 1978.

The composition is almost identical to the paper pulp work Diving Board with Shadow, Paper Pool 15, 1978. Over the series Hockney varies the number and combinations of coloured inks used, pushing this one image in as many ways as he can. There is a print made using a single cyan blue, while others are made in 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 colours.

The catalogue raisonné notes exactly how the present print was made:

7 runs: 7 colours; 7 runs from 4 stones and 3 aluminium plates:
1 light cyan blue; method 1a; IIa
2 medium cyan blue; method 1a; IIa
3 cyan blue; method 1b; IIa
4 dark green: method 1a; IIa
5 transparent cyan blue; method 3c (LF); IIa
6 transparent cyan blue; method 3b (LF); IIa
7 medium green; method 1a; IIa

1a means the image was drawn on stone
1b means the image was drawn on aluminium sheet
3b means the image was made from knife-cut masking film
3c means the image was composed from photographically prepared line film, halftone film or both
IIa indicates these were made on a Flatbed Offset Lithography Press, where an indirect impression was transferred from the printing element to the blanket cylinder and set off onto paper