Showing posts with label printmaking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label printmaking. Show all posts

Sunday, March 8, 2020

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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Tuesday, February 26, 2019

In the Art Room: Kindergarten Hearts, a Follow Up!

What you see here just might be my new favorite kindergarten lesson! I shared this lesson (and video!) originally here, if you recall. My students began with a foam heart shape purchased from the Dollar Tree. We then added foam sticker shapes and pulled prints (I'll get to that here in a moment but you can scroll down to get an idea). Those prints were used for one project. Then we were left with our printing plates.
 I LOVE doing this technique with our old printing plates. I've done this same process with cut paper snowflakes, leaves, round printing plates and styrofoam printing plates. I'll explain the process and supplies here...or you can just check out the video.

 I see my kindergarten kids for 30 minutes, twice a week. Here's how I broke the lesson down. 

Day 1: We read The Shape of My Heart. We learned about organic and geometric shapes. We placed sticker shapes on our foam hearts. The hearts came from the Dollar Tree and the stickers from Michaels.
 Day #2: We printed! The kids printed by themselves and did great! They were to pull at least four prints so insure they had two good ones. We used foam rollers and tempera paint. You can read more about that here. 
 Day #3: We did the 100 Dot Challenge! At least that's what I called it. Each table had 10 Sargent Paint Sticks. The kids were tasked to making 10 different color dots with the 10 sticks. This fell close to the 100th day of school so it was really fun. We also learned to count by 10s!

Day #4: We cut out our two favorite heart prints and glued them to our dotted background. Then we went to the glitter table.
 And, as predicted, GLITTER GOT EVERYWHERE. Thankfully a kid pointed out the glitter in my coffee before I took a swig!
 Day #5: We painted a rainbow! I traced hearts in the middle of the paper before the kids got to class. I did this because our focus was on painting, not tracing. I also wanted them to have enough time to pain. 
 Day #6: Our last day...I took the hearts outside. With spray glue, I added the foil on top. Thin foil works best. Then I gave the hearts a dusting of spray paint. I like the $1 a can, matte black spray paint from Home Depot. The prep time for this took me about 30 minutes for 2 classes.
 Using the finest of steel wool, the kids were tasked with "finding their shapes" by sanding off the spray paint. They LOVED this! They were so excited to see their design come to life. 
 And I hot glued their hearts in place. 
This lesson had it all: shapes, printmaking, 100 dot making, collaging, rainbow painting, metal tooling and more. This is definitely a lesson I'll be repeating. Hope you and your young artists give it a go too!

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Wednesday, February 13, 2019

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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Thursday, January 10, 2019

In the Art Room: My Favorite Winter Art Lessons

Hey, friends! If the winter weather is causing you to have brain freeze and you are stumped for ideas on art lessons, I've put together this HUGE blog post filled with my favorite winter art lessons. Many of them also include instructional video...this way if you are out sick or find yourself feeling a little under the weather, you can simply have me be your art teacherin' sub. All I ask in return is that if you post projects that your students have created, inspired by my lessons, you give me a shout out. It's always nice to give art teachers credit for their lessons...especially when they share them for free as I'm doing here. I also LOVE to reshare your projects on my Instagram which would gain your more followers. So it's a win-win!

The Heather Galler coffee cups were created by my second graders some years ago and they are still a fave lesson of mine. You can find the details here. 
A HUGE hit with my students and other art teachers has been this Jen Aranyi inspired winter landscape. For this lesson, I created a video to share with you. My third graders really loved this project. 
I really am a sucker for black glue and chalk pastel, y'all. Each one of these fourth grade pieces was a stunner...and such a great lesson on using a new supply and color theory. Lesson with video here.
 This second grade selfie lesson introduced my students to the world of printmaking! We had a blast creating these prints for our hats and mittens. Complete lesson here.
In need of some lessons for the kindergarten crowd? This one was a hit with mine...video lesson here! 
Speaking of kindergarten...here is a winter landscape lesson that I've done with them for years. It teaches tint and shades as well as collage. You can find it here.
 My first graders were big fans of this project! Video and lesson details right here.
As my fourth graders wrap up this lesson, lemme tell you, the results have been amazing and it's quickly becoming my new fave project! More details with video here!
 Mural making is one of my fave things to do during these winter months. It brings us all together! You can find the details on this one here. 
This light up mural with ice skaters drawn by my fourth graders here.
And our very first mural collaboration from a while back, right here!
 Printing on fabric, making clay beads AND learning to sew?! YES this was a winner with the kids! All the details here. 
I LOVE metal relief projects...they are always a show stopper. I created these with my fourth graders a while back and they were a hit. Lesson here.

Need some more lessons? Check out THIS POST with five quickie winter projects! 

Also, be sure to check out this blog post for even more fun winter art lessons. Stay warm out there!

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