Printmaking on Repeat

Whew, it has been a busy month! I have enjoyed revisiting these lessons  from a few years ago, having made some improvements (check back here, here and here for the original posts).

5th and 6th Grade: Gelli Monoprints

To make these, we first printed a layer of texture on the gelli plates, followed by a second layer using a stencil each student made.

7th Grade: Collographs

Students made collograph plates by gluing textured materials: cardboard, felt, wallpaper, string to a cardboard surface. Students printed an edition of three prints, plus two artist proofs: one in an additional different colour, and one incorporating chine collé (tissue paper that gets glued to the paper at the same time as printing.

Once they finished printing, students covered their collograph plates with tinfoil to create a repoussee of the textures present. Colour and detail was added overtop with sharpie markers.

8th Grade: Styrofoam Relief Prints

The students created these prints by carving lines into styrofoam using a dull pencil. An edition of 3 prints were made, in addition to two artist proofs: one incorporating chine collé and one reduction print with two colours. The reduction prints were made by printing a first layer in one colour, drawing additional detail and line work on the plate and printing again overtop of the first layer in a second colour.

And, amidst all the flurry of printing with 70+ middle schoolers, I decided to host another after school workshop for my fellow teachers!

Beginnings

We are already into the fourth week of school and the busyness does not slow down! Hard to believe that on this day five years ago, I moved to Istanbul. What a wild adventure it has been!

I wanted to share some of the middle school projects from our first weeks. It has been two whole years since I taught middle school, so it will take some getting used to again. I am glad I keep a blog because I have a record to look back on of all the wonderful projects from years past.

The fifth and sixth graders About Me sculptures

We started off the year with making portfolios- I will have to remember to share some photos!

The new middle schoolers, the fifth and sixth graders made paper line sculptures. These are hanging up in the hallway across from the art room. Each line represents something about the artist; for example, an orange tab if you have been on a train, or a green spiral if you like ayran (a Turkish yogurt drink).

This project may look familiar, it is typically one that I do with kindergarten (see here and here) but I have learned that it works for many ages. Thank you to Cassie Stephens once again for the inspiration!

Fifth through eighth graders also made paper foldables for the elements of art; this was information I knew I wanted them to get down from the beginning!

Here are a few of the finished foldables. Each of the seven elements of art were to be written in an illustrative way; to add meaning to the element. Inside are definitions for each element and further drawn examples.

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Peruvian Arpilleras

I am so excited about this year’s final elementary pieces! I will be handing over the reins of elementary art to a new teacher next year, so these last moments with the students are precious.

We began this project looking at calendar images; describing the different parts of a landscape, including colours and textures. I had a few volunteers come up to the board to draw lines to show these different textures. Then we got busy painting (and stamping) paper to represent water, rocks, grass, flower fields…

A few lessons were spent painting paper before we had enough, I think we all enjoyed the process. Then we talked about assembling our landscapes in layers on a background paper. We talked about the different colours the sky could be (I ran out of the usual blue paper!) and what we could put in the foreground, middle ground and background. The students cut paper for each of these parts and glued down the pieces. I encouraged them to include additional shapes with paper- trees, rocks, clouds, sun…

A following lesson, we learned how to fold an origami house using two sizes of paper. To create a sense of perspective, we made larger houses to put in the foreground, and smaller ones for further back. We used pieces of foam behind to pop out these houses even more!

Once we had all of our main shapes, we added details. Out came the puffy paint (never thought I would go near this stuff, it has taken 5 years!) We practiced first on scrap paper, making dots, dashes, wavy and zigzag lines before moving onto embellish our landscapes.

The final step to make these arpilleras more textile-like: I had the students punch holes along two of the sides (some chose to go all the way around) and I demonstrated how to ‘sew’/wrap the edges in yarn to finish it off.

They are oh so lovely and colourful, and we learned many lessons along the way

 

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Credit for this idea goes to the amazing Cassie Stephens

 

Creation of ‘the Cave’

The cave drawings are finished! I hung them up in the stairway leading up to the library- it is dimly lit and draughty at times, the perfect cave-like environment!

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Relief Assemblages

 

This was our final project in fifth grade, following bootcamps in the art elements and principles. We looked at Louise Nevelson’s work, trying to identify recognizable objects and discussed the idea of relief and assemblage (sculptures utilizing found objects). I gave each student a square of cardboard, asking them to fill it with an assortment of forms. This was a great way to get rid of those little bits I have been storing: popsicle sticks, bottle caps, pasta, shells etc. I asked them to make sure they filled the whole space, and had areas of both high and shallow relief.

The final step was to spray paint the pieces, unifying all the components together. I was able to get extra time to take the class outside so each student could paint their own piece. It was a lot more fun to have them involved than for me to do it myself. A few of the students said they felt so ‘cool’ spray painting, it makes me want to do a graffiti unit with them next!

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I photographed each piece as it was drying outside. The paper backdrop with the paint remnants and shadows created an additional element of interest!

The finished class arrangement of tiles

Artists Communicate: Cave Art

I have had students drawing in caves for two weeks! We are beginning our art through culture units with exploring the very first art ever found.

As students came up for art, they were welcomed into the CAVE. I had all the curtains drawn so the room was dark- except for the images on the projector. I told them we were going on a tour of Lascaux cave in France- the same cave that a few teenagers also explored many years ago and come across something. We watched this video and I asked students to keep an eye out for anything surprising.

After watching, we discussed the drawings we saw. What subjects were drawn? Who do we think drew them? What materials do we think they used? We talked about the people that lived in caves- some of my students have visited  caves in Cappadocia where people lived in the past, and the cave homes people still live in today. We discussed the information these drawings give us about how people lived back then and the stories they tell us.

I gave students scraps of paper to practice drawing with our materials: chalk and oil pastels, crayons, conte and charcoal. I had them start thinking about what was important to them and what story they might want to tell through their artwork.

We did our drawings like the cave artists: up against the wall, taped to the underside of a table or chair, or on the floor- and we used flashlights to help us see.

After practicing and drawing initial ideas, students began drawing on bigger sheets of paper. Most of this paper has been sitting my shelves for quite some time and already shows some wear and tear. But I showed students how to rumple the paper to achieve a more rock-like texture.

Finished drawings need to tell a story or communicate something important to the artist. They also need to demonstrate the following elements of art: line, shape, colour, texture and value. Stay tuned for the display of our finished cave drawings!

 

 

Bootcamp: Shape, Space and Form

This week, we reviewed line and texture and learned about the element of shape. We looked for examples of shape in artwork and discussed the differences between geometric and organic, positive and negative shapes. Students then worked on a collage that incorporated both coloured and textured shapes. Finally, we explored how a flat shape can become a form if it is “popped”, bent, rolled, twisted, folded and attached to a surface. First and second created their own abstract paper sculptures with form and texture, while the older students created one form to add to a collaborative sculpture.

Fifth graders used their previous work as examples for each definition.

Bootcamp: Line and Texture

We are gearing up for a very exciting year in elementary art. To start off, we are working through an elements of art bootcamp to brush up on our basic skills: painting, cutting, gluing, assembling, etc. We are reviewing some of what we learned last year and making sure we are ready for our upcoming marathon.

Last week, we covered line and texture.

I have two lessons a week with the younger ones, so we spent one day on each element (for the older ones, we have to fit in two elements per lesson and it is a bit more hectic).

As they came into the art room, I donned a lab coat. Facing a slew of questions from the start, I announced that we were investigating and experimenting with texture and therefore had to wear appropriate attire (I had to get them excited about wearing artist smocks somehow!) I had a table of objects at the front covered with a cloth. A few brave volunteers came up to feel underneath the cloth, describing to the class what they felt. We briefly discussed different words we could use for texture: soft, rough, scratchy, bumpy, fluffy… this activity went much better with the second graders who had more English.

We looked at examples of artwork that showed texture and described the types of mark making we saw- textures created using line…. huh! Then it was off to the table to conduct experiments of our own.

Line

Texture

 

Under the Sea

A new unit was added to the kindergarten curriculum this year, as I found out they were studying the ocean in science! Following our exploration of dots and colour mixing (inspired by Kandinsky), we made bubble wrap printed backgrounds using colours we associate with the ocean.

We did guided practice drawings of different sea creatures- students already knew many of their names! Everyone did good copy drawings of their chosen creatures on thicker paper using sharpie. Drawings were painted with watercolours, cut out (by me), arranged and glued onto the printed backgrounds. Some early finishers painted sea anemone and jellyfish onto the backgrounds as well. A final touch was adding tissue paper seaweed overtop.

Self Portrait Haul

Kindergarten/1st

2nd/3rd

4th/5th

All new ideas for this year’s self portraits in elementary! Kindergarten and 1st grade drew themselves in their dream jobs. 2nd and 3rd grade did monochromatic Picasso-style portraits. 4th and 5th grade created self portraits in the style of Roy Lichtenstein/Pop Art.