Last chance to vote for us!

Hurry, hurry, only one more day to cast your vote for Mrs. Knight's Smartest Artists as Art Ed Blog of the Year 2012, and you can vote for your other favorites too! There are some truly amazing and inspiring blogs nominated, so check them out if you haven't already. Happiest Holidays to all my Dolvin friends and bloggy friends too! Thanks, click the link below...

http://www.theartofed.com/2012/12/09/2012-art-ed-blog-of-the-year-voting-open/

Snowy Evergreen Collographs

Gorgeous! This is the second year we have done this type of collograph printing lesson with my 3rd graders and we love it just as much this year as last. We began with sketching an assortment of evergreens - cypress, pine, fir, and spruce - then we created a textured landscape with a variety of materials like foam and felt. We rolled our white ink over the cardboard plates once the glue was completely dry and printed on Fadeless Paper, which is very thin and smooth for picking up textural detail. Finally, the last print or printing plate itself was sprinkled with a touch of irridescent glitter for that "first snowfall of winter" sparkle. Enjoy...

plates drying after assembly

                

Can you see the sparkle?

The plates look great too!

Reductive printmaking for winter

Fifth graders work on the advanced skill called reductive printmaking during this part of our second unit/9 weeks. In years past, we have used the subject matter of self-portraits for this lesson (see examples here), but this year, time snuck up on us and we chose a fun theme that we could spend less time on the drawing phase and have the prints complete before the end of the semester. (Don't worry, we'll still do self-portraits in another media.) So, day 1 we brainstormed for images of the winter season and chose one to draw large on our foam printing plates. We printed them 4 times with red printing ink, like so:

The following week, we drew into our plates a second time, creating details, patterns and textures, then, after the unfortunate fire drill(!), we printed the same sheets with black ink and voila! It was fun registering the printing plate the second time, to make sure it ended up directly over the previous print. After they dry, we will number and sign them and each student will save one print in their portfolios and the rest will be taken home to share for the holidays! Please excuse the hazy picture quality - the fog seems to have rolled in from outside this morning.