Collaborative Cityscape Mural

 

Architecture Prints, Take Two

I love styrofoam printing and had so many ideas for this unit on architecture with 2nd Grade!

We started by talking about famous buildings we know from our city and looking at other iconic examples of architecture from around the world. It is really neat to teach this group of TCKs. Many of them have traveled a lot in their young lives and have been to visit some of the places I showed… Needless to say, the unit introduction took a while as they all had travel stories to share!

I had the students complete two drawings of buildings- inspired from printed out images or their own ideas. Then they chose one drawing to redraw on a piece of styrofoam and cut out. The next class I demonstrated how to make a print and called them three at a time to a station at the back to make three prints. *While we were printing, the other students were working on a drawing assignment. The first print was made on a piece of coloured construction paper. The second, on a watercolour background (we painted this during a previous day as practice in making values). The third print I had the students put on a long piece of brown paper for a class cityscape mural. We ran out of time during class, so a few students did not get a chance to make a third print. I am excited to hang it up as soon as it is finished!

Introducing Scratchboard

Here they are, the long-awaited scratchboard drawings! Despite the fact that we practiced with white pencil with black paper, the process was still difficult. Perhaps I was a bit too ambitious to introduce the concept with middle schoolers, but some of them did get it! It was hard for them not to outline each of the shapes and instead separate shapes through the building up of values. This requires patience, and some of my students need stretched a bit in this area- to slow down, think and work more carefully. Here are a few of our finished accomplishments.

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So Long, Winter! Collographs

We started this project shortly after returning to school in January, when it was cold and snow was imminent. It did not end up snowing much this year, but we went ahead with the idea anyway!

The students first did landscape drawings, gleaning inspiration from calendar photographs and various tree illustrations I found online. We discussed the elements of a landscape and made sure to include something in the foreground, middle ground and background of our drawings.

The idea drawings became the inspiration for a collograph print. We did a texture hunt to collect rubbings from around the classroom as research for making our plates. I had the students focus on a section of their original drawings which they recreated with various textured materials and adhered to a cardboard rectangle. They ended up having to simplify some very detailed drawings! Some of the materials we tried were craft foam, cardboard, yarn, ribbon, lace doilies, tin foil, felt… These plates by themselves are works of art! We made sure everything was glued down really well and had time to dry before our next class for printing.

Each student printed a total of one or two prints. Some of them we ended up re-inking and printing a second time overtop of the first. We managed to get everyone to print in one class period, which is an improvement on previous years! The following class, we discussed how to properly sign, title and edition the finished prints. It is always thrilling to peel back the paper and reveal a print- you can never fully envision how each piece will turn out!