Monday, September 13, 2010

RELIEF PRINTMAKING


one student's relief print -
notice the beautiful white halo!

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, 17 of my 20 students were involved in printmaking. Everyone from the 6 year old to the 13 year olds enjoyed the process and had great success when they pulled their prints from the plates. (They also loved learning the new terms for this process!)

I found that the kids had the same reaction to white paper that many artists do (not all - but many). When told to draw anything they wanted as their stencil, they sat there paralyzed. Once boy suggested that they could do leaves, so I got one of my files which had tons of leaf stencils, and brought them out. The relief on their faces was so funny!

Once they began the steps to printmaking, there was no turning back. They loved choosing the color they wanted to start with from among the special inks (Dick Blick Printing Inks are great!), rolling them out with brayers, adding their stencils, and so on. In the end, each student went home with 5 or 6 different relief prints, beautifully and successfully achieved.

Tomorrow we will explore Monoprints during class time...really messy but fun! Then it will be on to the 3 weeks of drawing which I think will be another great project! I'll post more pictures of their work each week. :-)

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