Elementary School art - Printmaking exhibition

display of two colour foam plate prints

Apologies to my followers, I have been visibly absent from my blog for several months.  During this time period I have undertaken several new projects with another four grades during my year long artist residency. I also took on an additional short term side project at another school during the month of April.
Will be posting several entries over the next few days that will feature both completed and in progress photos and comments relating to my art educator activities since February.

But first I forgot to post the final printmaking project I did with grades one and twos back in January. This was styrofoam plate prints. I find this medium very adaptable to young artist. First this method doesn't pose any threats from injuries using sharp cutting tools, Ball point pens or pencil tips work fine. Students can also press shapes into the foam. One method I have employed to achieve this for example is to take string, lay it over the plate, put a hard cover book over top and have the young student stand on the book. Their body weight forces the string into the foam surface and leaves a embossed shape in it.

                         a grade one student drawing into a soft dense foam plate using ball point pen

drawing directly into the foam using a pen

detail of foam based drawing. The pen collapses the foam and the lower areas do not hold ink when it is rolled across the surface. The print produced reproduces the drawing as white line in reverse on the paper.

Water based relief printing ink (tempera paint will also work if you are on a shoe string budget) is applied to the plate surfacw with a soft rubber brayer (or soft foam brayer for tempera). Paper is set over top and using hand burnishing using either the palm of their hand or a tool like a rubbing stick or back of a wooden spoon pressure is applied thereby transferring the ink from the plate surface to the paper.

the inking area

In the photo above students and their teacher are engaged in application of water based relief printing ink to the surface of the foam plates. For this exercise one colour prints were made. I used metal cookie sheets for containing and rolling out inks onto the brayers.

Print made using blue ink. Notice how where the drawing remains as negative space defined by the white of the paper.