Lighthouse Collagraph Printmaking Project by small hands big art
I made these collograph prints with very young children. The one pictured is my example. They started with a piece of craft foam and scissors. I explained that they should try cutting out different shapes: some small, some slightly bigger, and to try and use some straight cuts and some curved or wiggley cuts. They didn't need to worry about it looking like an object that could be recognized. One little girl did opt to cut out a flower and a little boy did a house. We used white glue to attach the craft foam to a piece of corrugated cardboard and we let out printing plates dry until the next class. For printing we just used tempera paint and little foam rollers that can usually be purchased in the home improvement section of the Dollar Store. I encouraged them to print many images on one sheet of paper. I'm starting a newsletter with DIY templates, news from my Etsy shop, and step-by-step photos of some of the techniques for my artwork and illustrations. The newsletter in early June 2018 will include a template for a simple pop-up book to make with children. Sign-ups on the right-hand side of the blog.
How to Make Printmaking Easy for Even Your Most Rambunctious Class % %
A few weeks ago Open Press-owner Brian Kyle (@bkmms) shared his most recent printmaking experience ...
Second nine weeks involves printmaking projects for my 3-5 graders - if you follow me on Instagram (@smartestartists), you know we have be...
When I tell people I'm a printmaker, it's often followed by the question, "What's that?" My short and sweet answer is that it's playing with big stamps. In truth, it's so much more than that. When you start learning about prints, the jargon, techniques, and terms can be overwhelming—photogravure, pochoir, serigraph, mezzotint, collagraph, linocut. And that's just scratching the surface (pun intended, for all you fellow printers). But when you break it down, all of these fancy names and techniques fall into just a few categories. There are four main categories for traditional printmaking: relief, intaglio, lithography, screenprint. I would say that digital printing is the modern fifth category as well. I'm not sure where this image originated, but I love how concisely it visually represents these four categories. If you would like to learn more about how all of this printmaking business works, MoMA has a super interactive guide that walks you through the basics for each process.
You might have seen glimpses of a new printmaking series on Instagram, and I thought I tell you a bit more about it. The printing plates are made using recycled Tetra Paks, and the prints have an aged look – you can almost feel that something old or used is involved. So far, I have ...
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Today I am doing a bit of prep for a workshop I’ll be teaching next week. I wanted to do some kind of printing project and have settles on collagraph prints. A collagraph is a printing plate …
Let me start out by saying this has been one of the most successful and visually stunning projects that I've ever done with my students. It is definitely the most exciting printmaking project that we've ever done at Thomas. I wrote the lesson and went into the project thinking that it would probably be pretty good. I told my students that I'm absolutely blown away by the results of their talent and hard work. This lesson is a keeper. My previous 4th grade printmaking lesson was decent, but not outstanding. It was too similar from an art-making perspective to the Wild Things I do with my 2nd graders. This year, I really wanted to push the medium a little more by printing with multiple colors. I ended up deciding to push it to three colors and add in a little vocab by also bringing in the use of complimentary colors. Check out the lesson plan here! Close up of the piece above. Wow. Whew. That was a lot of examples, right? I just couldn't help myself this time. They were all so good that I had to show them off. If you're still reading, you're in luck. I'm going to tell you how I did this project and I'm going to use pictures! Let your inner kid rejoice. Start with a drawing of whatever you want to print. I had my kids do animal portraits. I gave them each a piece of the foam they would be printing on, then had them trace around it to give them the size of the final artwork. I then collected the foam for use the following week. Tape your drawing over the printing foam and use a dull pencil or other blunt tool to press down on the lines of just the outline of the subject. Take the paper off and press down again to make sure the marks are deep enough to make proper prints. I had my students make sure they ended up with three good prints of the background on the first day of printing. Re-tape the original drawing the following class. Press down any remaining details. Cut out the subject along the line that was pressed down last time. Now print with this piece directly on top of the original prints. I had my students use at least one set of complimentary colors. On the final day of printing, cut out a small detail that makes sense to print in a third color. Then, you guessed it, print this piece right on top of the original prints. This was my demo piece I did with the materials above.
Kids learn about the fine art of printmaking using flat pieces of styrofoam, tempera paint, and rollers to make prints.
Visually Scaffold Your Curriculum With Ease % %
Welcome to our series of online classes! We currently partnered with 30 teaching artists who teach drawing and painting in a variety of media. When you purchase a class you can follow along with the instructor and your fellow students and share your work on the online forum. The instructors are available anytime for help […]
Can you believe we only have 8 days of school left? Where did this year go? Looking back on all of the projects that we completed, I am very pleased with the quality and quantity of work that my students produced. I truly believe that I have the most talented, wonderfully amazing students in the world! While looking back over all of the projects, I was shocked and a little upset with myself that we didn't do printmaking this year. While in college, I LOVED printmaking. I even did an independent study in it and my entire senior art exhibition was printmaking. We did printmaking in 7th grade last year but I wanted to kick it up a notch this year and make it a bit more challenging. I decided to try reduction printmaking! For this project, I took a picture of the students and used paint.net to posterize the photos into 3 colors (black, grey and white). Students shaded on the back and transferred all of their white areas onto the linoleum. We use easy carve linoleum at school and it's so easy for the kids. We haven't had any slips (or bad cuts) this year! Students used the gauge to carve away all of the areas of their print that would be left white. Since we were printing on white paper, we didn't need to print this part. All that would be left would be the grey and black areas. They chose a color and mixed it with some white to make a tint. Then students pulled a proof. A proof is a practice print so they can see what it would look like. If they were happy with their proof, they could pull 10 or more quality prints. The students discussed what made a quality print and here is their list... enough ink, no white spots linoleum carved away where it was meant to be carved away (no stray marks) Ink has an orange peel texture No finger prints No smudges (where the paper slipped on the plate) After they printed 10 or more quality prints, they had to carve away all of the grey area, leaving only the black areas to print. They then mixed a shade of ink and printed on top of their first prints. Here is the final result
Create your own prints using a pasta machine as a press!
This collagraph printmaking project had all the makings of a the perfect art experience! Big heavy blocks, movement, color theory, texture, & pattern! Not to mention the end result was totally frame-worthy! In fact, one student’s grandpa came flying in a few days later with one of these finished masterpieces. He was hoping we were […]
This week, 4th will be starting their background for the Collagraph printmaking project! This was inspired by the fabulous @Mrsdow_Artroom! Give her a follow on Instagram! After they finish their background, they'll start gluing the foam shapes onto their square printing plate. Videos and how to below! Materials: Speedball ink Brayer 90 lb paper Wonderfoam shapes school smart fluorescent paint Big Kid's Choice paintbrushes Elmer's Glue-all This background was done with School Smart Washable Fluorescent Paint Here's a short time lapse video on how to paint your background! These backgrounds were done with Sax Liquid Watercolors (SIDE NOTE: REGULAR FOAM DOESN'T WORK FOR THIS PROJECT! IT FALLS OFF!) ALSO: Make sure you start in the corner of your square and work your way out! Make both sides match or be symmetrical! Like this one! Here's a little time lapse of me creating another printing plate MAKE SURE YOU USE A DIFFERENT KIND OF FOAM, LIKE THESE WONDERFOAM SHAPES!! or these Darice sticky foam sheets would work well too! & no glue needed! Here's a time lapse of me gluing the shapes on. Start in one corner and work your way out, making sure both sides match, or are symmetrical! Then, you're ready to ink up and start printing! Make sure you keep your corner design in the middle of your paper as you're rotating! Make a mark on the corner that you want to put in the middle, so you can see it when you're printing! Here's Dr Fambrough's class doing a great job! Here are some awesome artists from Mrs. McAllister's class!! I was literally shrieking for joy at the way these turned out! Mrs. Stacey is so proud of y'all!!! <3 Here are some prints from Mrs. Fambrough's class!
I fell in love with printmaking back in college and my favorite printing process is monotyping- drawing or painting on a smooth non absorbent surface and then transferring it to paper. A monotype produces a completely unique print with a process that is unpredictable, expressive, painterly and totally unlike any other creative process. There are all kinds of tools and supplies for monotypes (acrylic printing plates, the Gelli plate, etc) but really any slick surface will work- even something as simple as a plastic bag! PRINT with plastic bags from Alisa Burke on Vimeo. I like to start by "inking up" a plastic bag with either a brayer or a paint brush. You can can use printing ink, acrylic paint or even fabric paint if printing on fabric surfaces. There are all kinds of ways to get expressive on the surface- you can scratch into the paint with a toothpick, old paint brush or the end of a pencil. You can pull paint away (subtractive method) with a cotton swap or a rag. You can even add paint and brush strokes to the surface. Once you are satisfied its time to print by simply placing the plastic bag onto your surface. I like to roll my brayer over it a couple of times and peel the bag away from the surface. You are left with a print! If you are lucky and there is still enough ink on the bag you are able to get a second print- called a "ghost print". Since I tend to work more messy and abstract I like to start by adding layers of prints on top of each other to create a background full of color and texture. And then I go back into my surface with adding a final layer of pattern (typically flowers or shapes inspired by nature). Interested in learning more about printmaking? I've got a fun new mini class called Print.Make.Play. Check out all the details HERE
Very cool printmaking ideas and inspiration for printmaking projects.
Kids learn about the fine art of printmaking using flat pieces of styrofoam, tempera paint, and rollers to make prints.
Read below to find out how we created these, see step-by-step pics and watch my YouTube tutorial on this lesson! Printmaking is one of my favorite things to teach in art. I love it because it alway…
This step-by-step block printing lesson teaches how to do linocut and foam printing with your students complete with block printing supplies and videos.
