The last of this school year's art projects through my Artist in Education placements

grade four student painting his low relief study relating to undersea life

I finally collected up and have put together a public display of completed artwork from two classrooms I visited from April/May at St. James Public School here in Thunder Bay. 
This is being hosted by the Waverley Library in our cities northcore business district.

The first display is a collection of 19 mix-media works created by senior kindergarten and grade one students from the classroom of D. Madunic. They used drawing, painting, collage, stamping to explore a regional geographic feature known as the Sleeping Giant. We started by drawing shapes and working out a composition on paper board. 

pencil sketch on board

applying the paint

The next step was to apply colour and texture into the drawing using paint. I asked them to think about animals and plants that might be found around the region and put some of these into the studies. Paper shapes were cut out and glued onto the board. Finally they drew plants and animals into soft foam plates which had been attached to cut squares of cardboard. Water based relief printing ink was rolled onto the foam and these were stamped strategically into areas of their storyboard.

This project worked well as it had them continuously engaged in hands-on activity during each visit.
In expensive all media paper board was used as the surface onto which the artwork was translated onto.
I had originally intended for them to apply some low relief sculpting medium to the boards, but these ended up as a side project since many of these were too heavy to attach onto the boards.

red fox created from air dry sculpting medium and water-based paint

The second project was with the grade 3/4 classroom of teacher 
D. Mayotte. Her students paired mental imagery from a choice of four poems they had recently read with three dimensional low relief paintings on panel.

Students drew sketches in pencil on paper. These papers with drawings were glued onto precut masonite panels. Using air dry sculpting medium they built up shapes on the panel using the sketch as their template. The sculpting medium as bonded to the panel surface using white glue and brushes.

Once these were set acrylic paint was applied to both the low relief shapes and the background. Finally the students wrote short statements to accompany each of their paintings.

Grade 5 + 6 Drypoint Self-portrait Project

During the months of March/April I visited 3 classrooms at St. Elizabeth Catholic Elementary School in Thunder Bay and took on a visual art project (intaglio printmaking + wet media) with over a total of 70 students.
In the fall of 2014 I had presented a six-sided You Cube print project in two other schools. That project used carved relief surfaces to produce multiple images (portraits on paper) in various contrast colour combinations. Those images were pasted onto the sides of a constructed six-sided cardboard cube. I saw an idea in Pinterest titled You Cube and decided to adapt this to using printmaking as the medium since it would create multiple images with greater ease than other mediums.

This time I decided to switch techniques to incorporate intaglio using drypoint on thin acrylic plates as the matrix. Students were asked to create sketches on paper from their self-portraits and then translate these onto the plastic plates using etching needles. Ink was wiped into the scratched line and the plates were printed onto heavy cotton rag paper using a small manually turned etching press that I supplied.

I supplied 25 home-made etching needles. Fortunately it worked out that I had different visits with each class at different times and the needles were brought from one classroom to another so everyone got the opportunity to have a tool to use.

We used Akua carbon black intaglio ink to make the print onto the paper. Prints were attached to the top of each print using green painters tape to attach onto both sides of the large sheets of corrugated cardboard (used to construct their cubes from). The were propped up against walls and allowed several days to dry. 

Then the prints were attached onto plasticore boards again using the green painters tape. Students applied colour to each print with wet media that included watercolour and tempera. 
Colour renderings were accomplished in three approaches, using one of the following for each print

• realistic flesh tone in watercolour with a background
• flat even colour in either watercolour or tempera
• fantasy portrait (they were given a few trays of iridescent and fine glitter watercolour to use if they so chose)

These were trimmed and using liquid white glue were attached to the surface of a their 6 sided cube. An additional panel was created using their initials and a zentangle background in dry media. One side of the box was left unhinged to use as a door or lid.

Two of the teachers decided to have their students incorporate a small painted sculpting clay based figure and place these inside the box.

Two weeks back I picked these up from the school and put up a display at two separate branches of the Thunder Bay Public Library. These will be up for a couple of weeks.

Junior primary classroom art activities - monoprints and mix media

Recently I engaged a grade one/two split class at Hyde Park public school here in Thunder Bay in a two part activity that began with the students making basic monoprints onto paper.
A Monoprint is a one of a kind image that is transferred from one surface onto another. 



Wikipedia defines the form as: 

1. Monoprinting is a form of printmaking that has images or lines that can only be made once, unlike most printmaking, where there are multiple originals. There are many techniques of monoprinting. Examples of standard printmaking techniques which can be used to make monoprints include lithography, woodcut, and etching.

However this activity became more of a mix media project since the use of a paper mask to create negative shapes was implemented. Drawing, colour introduced using markers, pencil crayon and collage (cut/paste) were additional stages that added embellishment to the prints.

To begin students were asked to create shapes from construction paper and cut these out. These would serve as a masks placed over top of paintings to block out shapes that would be left as negative space from the white paper area left without paint covering it. 

painting the modified pigments onto the freezer paper plates and placing cut paper shapes over top

The next phase had each student paint modified acrylic and tempera paint onto a piece of plastic coated freezer paper.
A small amount of Createx monoprinting medium was mixed into the water based pigments and it was painted with brushes onto the plastic barrier surface.

The cut paper shapes were then placed on top of the wet paint. Heavier smooth surface 250 gm rag paper was placed over top and taped down to hold it steady. Students used both soft brayers to roll across the top and gentle pressing using the palms of their hands.

The paper was carefully lifted away from the painted sub-sheet with the paint and was allowed to dry.

For the next stage the students then worked into the open negative space areas with markers to add in elements that included animals, figures, etc.. Some of the young artists were even more adventurous and added in subtle elements of collage using glue and cut paper shapes or transparent tissues.

Teacher Susan Lieske assisting a young artist with his monoprint

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.