Printingmaking Made Easy!

Since I've spent the last couple of weeks in Printmaking Land with my second and third graders, I thought I'd share everything I know about printmaking in the elementary art room! I started to record a podcast episode which quickly turned into TWO podcast episodes. There's a lot to printmaking in the elementary art room but none of it is scary, difficult or even all that messy! My kids love it and so do I. So I'll be sharing both podcast episodes here as well as my favorite lessons. Be sure and click the link as it will take you directly to the lessons which often feature a video for you and your students!

In the first episode in this series, I focus a lot on printing with Styrofoam sheets. They are a great alternative to having small children carve into linoleum or wood blocks (lord, I can see the lawsuit now!) and can produce beautiful results. Here's everything I could think of about printing with Styrofoam sheets!

My favorite tip is to have kids use ink pens when incising the lines into the foam. I have them use a blue pen first and a black pen second. This ensures that they'll incise the lines deeply enough by doing it twice. When I see the black ink pen, I know they've traced their lines not once but twice. 

In this episode, I talk a lot about supplies and set up. Here's a visual! My second graders are doing a rainbow roll in this photo. Notice the dollops of ink at the top of the tray where they are to dip their brayer, not roll through the ink. Then, in the space below, they are to roll their brayer up and down only (so as not to mix the colors) to cover the brayer before rolling it onto their printing plate. Messy mats are used to help keep the table clean. Students also place all of their prints on the messy mat during clean up (without stacking them as they will stick together) and slide the entire mat onto our drying rack. Then we toss our printing plates in one sink, brayers and trays in another for me to do a quick wash after school.

In the episode, I also mention printing on newspapers, painted papers, wrapping paper, metallic papers and much more. The results are stunning!

 

In the follow-up episode, I talk about printing in 30-minute classes. On the first day, we do a single color print like these third-grade robots you see here. The following art class, we do a rainbow roll like you saw above. 

 On our third day of printing, we spend a hot minute adding more designs to our printing plates before doing a reduction print. The kids were fascinated by this process. 

And on the last day, we make these! Never throw away those printing plates or simply send them home. You can make such cool works of art with them with inexpensive foil sheets, steel wool and spray paint. Take a listen to find out how!

 Third Grade Cities! This lesson was a hit as the kids were allowed to swap cities to create some diversity in their finished piece. The complete lesson in the link!

Winter Portraits by Second Grade  Need a fun way to introduce printmaking and patterns?  Check out this self-portrait project!

Egyptian God Portraits Fourth grade students used their knowledge of Egyptian gods and symbols to print the designs in the background of these portraits. 

Positive Four Letter Word Collages with Prints! This is a lesson I return to year after year and seem to change and tweek each time. You can see alternatives to this lesson here. 

Gelatin Prints  I don't do this kind of printing anymore with homemade gelatin printing plates for a couple of reasons: I don't like using the gelatin (it's an animal product that I'm not comfortable using) and it's labor-intensive. BUT the results! There are recipes for making your own more permanent printing plates that don't seem to be difficult at all. I found several on YouTube. 

 Sushi Collage with Gelli-Plate Prints I do have a class set of Gelli-Plates and we love them. The best thing to do is just let your kids go crazy exploring different methods of printing on the surface with stencils and texture and color. In the end, you'll have a fun stack of papers like you see below that can then be used to create collages like you see above!

 If you would like a video to walk you through more of these processes, be sure and check out this blog post! 

Collagraph Prints are ones created by adding things to a surface. This is different that the Styrofoam prints which are a subtractive kind of printing. Collagraphs are additive. My fourth graders created these prints a couple years ago in celebration of dot day!  

That project was very similar to one I did just last year with my kindergarten friends! We used foam hearts from the Dollar Tree as the base and sticky-backed foam stickers for the design. You can see the complete lesson here. 

 We collaged our completed hearts for these sweet masterpieces.

We then wrapped our lesson by wrapping our hearts and doing a little burnishing as I mentioned at the start of this blog post! I hope that gives you a bunch of ideas for printmaking in your art room and removes any fear that you may have! Happy Printing!

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In the Art Room: Kindergarten Hearts!

Not long ago, I was at Dollar Tree and found these foam heart shapes. I got an idea to use them in conjunction with the book, The Shape of my Heart with my kindergarten friends. I've ALWAYS wanted to do a project inspired by this book but I just couldn't think of a way to make it work...then, I got the idea to use foam shapes and pull prints. We've been doing it all week and we are loving it. I made a process video for you and your kiddos!

I see my kindergarten for 30 minutes, twice a week. On the first day, we used foam shape stickers purchased at Michaels to fill our hearts. We read the book and chatted about the difference between organic and geometric shapes. 

The following day we were ready to print! A friend on Instagram suggested that I use foam rollers and tempera paint for the printing portion...here is a peek at our table set up:

And here's a look-see at our prints!

Don't you love them!? Each kiddo pulled two prints. Next week, we'll begin cutting them out and adding them to our dotted backgrounds. Details about that in the video.

Now, what to do with our heart printing plates? Well...check out that first image and be sure to watch the video! I'm so excited, we'll be making metal reliefs with them. I did not explain the process of how we will frame those metal hearts in the video as I'm still working that through. I'll keep you posted tho. Have fun with this lesson...I know we have been!

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Printing with Gelli Plates!

Hey, y'all! Last year I shared this super fun printmaking and collage project over at the AOE Art Ed Now conference. I'm excited to be able to share the video I created for that conference with you now. Here you go:

I teamed up with Gelli Arts to create the video because I love using their printing plates in my art room. They are a wonderful plate to use with kids of all ages and allow for so much exploration. In this video, I take you through a TON of different printmaking methods. Check it out!

 What I love most about printmaking is being left with SO MANY FUN PAPERS once complete. But what to do with them all? In the video, I share a favorite lesson of mine: making them into collage sushi. But, really, the possibilities are endless.

Thanks so much for letting me share. If you have any questions about the processes shared in the video, just ask. AND if you have any suggestions on printing, please drop a line in the comments. I know everyone loves to explore this medium with their kiddos and it's always fun to try out new techniques.

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In the Art Room: Second Grade Kindness Prints!

I have been oversharing this lesson so much on my Instagram because I LOVE IT! My second graders learned so much in the making of these kindness prints: how to create a printing plate, make marker prints, pull ink prints, burnish their printing plate with spray paint, steel wool and aluminum, use Model Magic to mix colors and create a heart and...last but not least, pick a word of kindness that best resonates with them. DID I MENTION THAT THIS LESSON PACKED A PUNCH?! Holy cats! But, y'all. I'm in LOVE.

 So, how did we create these masterpieces? I created a video to share the process. I thought I'd break it down class-by-class what we worked on. Keep in mind that I have 30 minute art classes with my 2nd graders...so I'll be breaking down my lesson in baby bites for those of you that have hour long classes. Just combine my two days and you'll know what you can accomplish in one class of an hour.

Day One: Chatted about Robert Indiana, looked at his LOVE sculpture. From there, we switched gears and began drawing the designs on our printing plate. First with one color ink pin and then a different color to insure that we made the lines deep enough.

Day Two: Continued tracing and then started coloring our designs with water soluble markers. Early finishers pulled the first of the marker prints.

 Day Three (week two): We spent the class pulling marker prints. Once you print one, you simply recolor and print another! 

Day Four: EVERY ONE'S FAVORITE: INK PRINTING! These kids loved ink printing...and pulled a million amazing prints. The key is having a tray that is rectangular (so the kids only roll up and down; I'm using the lid from my tempera cakes) and using ink. Sorry, no skimping here, paint just won't cut it.

Every two kiddos shared an ink tray and a brayer. I used the same ink and brayer for two classes, back to back. No issues with the ink drying...prints pulled were still beautiful!

 Day Five (week three): I've had the idea of the kids doing something with their printing plates for some time now...and I really thought they would be great embossed. Here's the key: the prep is a little on the heavy side. I laid all of the plates on a large sheet of paper, gave them a shot of 3M spray glue and covered them with inexpensive foil. Then I sprayed them all with the $1 a can matte black spray paint from Home Depot (this is the ONLY paint to use when doing this kind of project, it burnishes off the easiest!). Then the the kids burnished off the spray paint and they were amazed with the results. Some even wanted to add color:

 While pretty, I would recommend skipping this step. It just about killed my Sharpies as the tip of the marker was ruined by the spray paint particles. 

Day Six: We made Model Magic hearts! The kids could pick any two primary colors and white. They rolled them, twisted them until they got their desired color/design. Then they shaped them into hearts. They had to also decide upon their word of choice...so they would know where to place their heart. Their heart would act as the dot to the I or the O.

Day Seven: LAST DAY! We used strips of 4.5" X 1" pieces of paper to create our words. They were glued down. Then the kids picked a construction paper frame and decorated it with sparkle tape I found at the Dollar Tree!

A long project? YES. Did they learn a lot of new styles, methods and techniques? YES-YES! I would definitely do this again...I can't wait to hang these in the hall!

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In the Art Room: Printmaking Made Easy!

Hey, y'all! I'm in the middle of lesson planning for some upcoming fall-themed projects in the art room. Since my third graders are getting ready to embark on the above printed leaves project, I thought I'd share the lesson video with you as well as my fave printing projects. By the way, I often update my YouTube channel before sharing here. So if you wanna see some art teacherin' videos as soon as they launch, you might want to subscribe here. 

Every since I learned about marker prints from my art teacherin' buddy Don over at Shine Brite Zamorano, I have been in love. The technique is so simple and yet so impactful. I think my third graders will have so much fun creating their leaf collages. We are going to be tying in science by discussing just why leaves change colors. The background will be a lesson in glue resist and watercolor techniques. I'll be sure to share the complete lesson when we are finished. Until then, here are some of my very fave printing projects!

Last year, my first graders explored printmaking with these LOVE collages. They did both marker and ink prints and had a great time doing so. 

In this video, I share with you some more tips on marker prints as well as printing with ink. When I first started teaching, printmaking was a daunting teaching task for me. Over the years, I've come up with some things that work for me...maybe you'll find 'em helpful as well.

I love the powerful impact of these positive and negative leaf prints. The amount of prep time needed to make these printing surfaces is well work the results they produce. 

Last year, third grade got their toes wet with this printmaking project that explored cityscapes, depth and watercolor techniques. I created a couple of videos to walk the kids through the processes.

By the way, I create these videos for the following reasons: 1. my sanity; 2. so that all of my students can see my demos and 3. for anyone else who wants to use them! Seriously, feel free to play my videos in your art room. It's the reason I share them on my YouTube channel.

Last year, I was super smart and did printmaking with all grade levels at once. That meant all supplies were out and ready for the entire day. No switching visuals, supplies, etc. It really made printmaking a snap for me. Second grade worked on these sweet printed winter selfies. 

Fourth grade created these amazing Egyptian god portraits a couple of years ago. So much in one project: drawing, printing, metal tooling! 

A fun variation on traditional printing are floating chalk prints. If you've not tried this, I highly recommend it, so fun, easy and beautiful!

Why not print on fabric? My third graders not only enjoyed the printing process but also stitching their fabric pieces together. 

Making your mark with untraditional materials like cardboard is fun too. My third graders learned about the history of the Eiffel Tower while creating these beauties. 

And, of course, I've been sharing these fun radial prints that my fourth graders just wrapped up. 

Kids love printmaking because it's good, messy fun. I love teaching printmaking because it is a wonderful medium that allows the kids to see that art is not just a one-n-done. But it is all about trying over and again to create something awesome. 

I'm always looking for fun printmaking projects for my students as well as helpful tips and tricks. If you've got 'em, please share 'em in the comments below! 

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