Adventures in printmaking

 

Printmaking is one of my favorite things to teach. My eighth graders are using their selfies as a subject, while the seventh graders each chose an animal to place in an environment.  They are just about finished, so the final results are coming soon.

A Very Personal Place

The eighth graders designed slab clay boxes using a basic template for building.  We started with a square box for most students, but I allowed the students who were up for the challenge to use different shapes.  We had some triangles and a few hearts.  I prompted the students to use their personal interests as an influence during thier design process.  They used additive and subtractive building techniques to add the designs in addition to underglazes.  As thier process developed, some students also used stenciling and layers of color.

We found the Zen in Zentangles

These were really fun. So much so that some kids made two! I have recently come to the conclusion that the elements and principles of design are not the end all be all of Visual Arts learning and that writing the definitions of them isn't really learning.  By making these zentangles we discussed and applied most of the E's and P's in a creative way.  

Retablos to Frida Kahlo

The eighth grade students looked at the work of Frida Kahlo for inspiration this nine weeks.  I feel that it is important for young artists to see how the events in our lives can have an influence on our work and how our work as artists can be our voice.  THe students worked very hard at drawing from a mirror and using proportions, for most of the students this was the first time they drew this way.  I was so happy to see so many of them begin to dig deeply toward a self expression.

Multi- media Still Life's

The seventh and eighth graders created these drawings using graphite, color pencil, oil pastel, and collage. I set up a huge still life around the room and they worked from the still life to see the values and details.  Working and manipulating the media was our focus, I think they did pretty well. 

I got the idea for this project from another art ed blogger http://calvertcanvas.blogspot.com .