Art in the Public Schools - Grade 5 and 6 drypoint with watercolour addition

I just completed a several visits to 3 classrooms at a local Elementary school through my Ontario Arts Council funded Artist in Education program placements. Students were engaged in a project that had them interpret a photo portrait that was taken of each of them into a drypoint line print on paper. 

This was another version of a You Cube relief project I did at two other schools earlier in the year. However this time around I used intaglio as the basis for creation of the imagery.

Thin packaging plastic was used to achieve this. The plastic is heavier than acetate but thinner  
in density than plexiglass. I fashioned etching needles using darning needles inserted into pre-drilled ends of wood dowel and secured tightly using masking tape rolled around the eye end of the needle.
Akua black intaglio ink was wiped into the scratched images and the surface of each was polished using yellow pages torn from old phone directories.
3 prints were made by each student onto 250 gm rag paper and by manually passing the inked plates, paper and felts underneath the adjusted top roller of my table top etching press. 

We allowed a week for drying of the ink and then the prints were taped onto corrugated plastic boards. I put together individual foam plates with button sizes of 12 hues of tube watercolours and students applied paint into the monochromatic studies.

The final stage of this project had students take the trimmed prints and fasten them using liquid white glue onto 3 sides of a 14 cm (5.5 inch) square corrugated cardboard box.

For public presentation 12 cubes will be stacked in a vertical format (fastened together between top and bottoms of each square using double sided tape. I will place it on a larger cardboard base sheet to help with stablility. We should have around 10 columns that can be viewed from 360 degrees. One side of each box will open like a small door and students will place a handmade clay object they will make that best represents some aspect of themselves.