Gelli print snowflakes, 5th grade

"Snowflakes in a Rainbow" would be a great way to describe the effects of our 3-layered gelli prints. This was our very first time trying the gelli plates for printmaking, and we learned lots for the future. It is a tradition to cut paper snowflakes in my art room during the final days of the year, and we used those as our stencils for printing. We used Blick brand mixing acrylics in primary yellow, blue, and magenta on white sulphite paper. Here are some of our colorful results!

Evergreen Forest Collagraph prints, 3rd grade

Winter (almost) greetings! This printmaking lesson is a tradition for my 3rd grade classes over the years because it is always fun, successful, and you can use a wide variety of materials. Search my blog for more examples from years past.

 This year, we used matboard that was donated by Artome, who frames our art show each year. We added different shapes of evergreen trees in a snowy ground, and a hole puncher is a great way to get the effect of berries, cones, or decorations. We used lacy paper doilies and scraps of printing foam - some other great materials to try are craft foam, yarn, corrugated paper, and sandpaper. Make sure the pieces are glued down well. I use Blick block printing ink - when the final print has been pulled, we dust the plate with a layer of sparkly clear glitter and it becomes its own work of art as well. A few of the final prints also have some blue ink mixed in because we were getting low on white and it turned out great! I think we will continue that happy accident in the future.

   

   

Northern Lights monoprints, 2nd grade

Second graders enjoyed making Northern Lights monoprints with Arctic animals - we drew a simple icy landscape with black Sharpie and white crayon, then colored a plastic transparency with Crayola markers. Spritz the plastic with a mist of water and print on the paper - you can feel the reflection of the sky on the ice, so beautiful!

Tiger symmetry print

Asian art is a subject we explore each year in second grade - this year we started with one of the world's most beautiful and amazing creatures - the tiger! Several types of tigers live in Asia and many artists from this region show the beauty of the animal in their art. Here are some of the examples we viewed, and an illustration of the symmetrical nature of the tiger's face.

The symmetry lends itself well to a special type of monoprint, or single print, called symmetry printing - the artist paints on half the paper, and folds the other half over and rubs the top to transfer the paint, creating a mirror image.  Because the tempera dries quickly on the construction paper, we used a quick rhythm of painting just a few strokes and then printing - “paint a little, print a little.” The students followed me in a guided drawing of half the tiger face, as seen above, and then we began painting the white areas. The next session we added orange and black - some asked to paint the eyes green if we had time. I love the way each tiger has a unique face and expression!

Seasonal reduction prints by 5th grade

My fifth graders spent a good portion of the second nine week period creating reduction prints. Students selected a seasonal image representing fall or winter and drew the basic outlines on a piece of printing styrofoam. We printed that layer, then reduced the printing foam surface by drawing details, textures, and background before printing again with a new color. Some students made further reductions to the plate by cutting away the background and printing a third color. Here are my teacher examples:
  

The following pics are student prints, made with Dick Blick printing ink and construction paper.

  

  

  

  

Seasonal shape collagraph prints in 3rd grade

Third graders chose a simple shape of the fall or winter season, like a pumpkin, an evergreen, or a holly leaf for our printmaking subject this year. We cut the shape from thick tagboard and then added a mosaic of shapes inside from the leftover cardboard bits. We used a sheet of corrugated board for the background. 

   



We rolled the ink on the two plates separately then stacked them for printing. Once dry, we dotted on some contrasting color tempera for a little splash of color.