Printmaking Bonanza Part 1: Kinder -2

It is Summer and I have to admit, my blogging fell to the wayside. I got married a couple of weeks ago and let's just say writing up posts wasn't a priority in the final weeks of school.

I finished my last day of teaching this year on June 20th and was married 5 days later. The last big unit I taught my kiddos was printmaking and now that I've had some time to reflect, I am ready to share our successes.

This is only my 2nd year teaching art at my elementary school. Most of my students haven't had many or any art classes before they met me. I didn't get to printmaking with them last year because I had so much groundwork to lay down but I made sure to cover it this year.

Here is what we did in the primary grades. I'm not going break down all of the steps here on the blog because I made some videos on my youtube channel. If you want to know more, please submit comment below.

Kindergarten: Wayne Theibaud inspired Gum ball machine prints.
We have been studying pop art in Kindergarten and what more fun way to experiment with printmaking than be inspired by Wayne Thiebaud's 1963 painting "Three Machines".

Wayne Thiebaud "Three Machines" 1963

oooooo! gold paint!

We practiced printing lines with cardboard, and circles with recycled glue stick caps.


1st grade: We practiced printing by using styrofoam plates and used the crayola marker ink to color and print them  on wet paper. We drew cupcakes and angry birds to go with the whole Pop Art theme. Unfortunately didn't get any photos because I have 30 kids in these classes at the very end of the day....I'm usually running on fumes at this point of the day.

2nd grade: We first experimented with mono-printing by painting colorful landscapes inspired by contemporary English printmaker Chris Keegan. We quickly painted tempera on plastic transparency with thick paint strokes and pressed/rubbed paper on the wet paint to pull our prints.

Chris Keegan "Brilliant Sky"

We then used styrofoam plates to draw an angry bird. We colored them with crayola markers and printed them on white drawing paper. We cut these out and collaged them on our dried landscape paintings to make an Angry Birds game course. We glued a small piece of cardboard to the back of the Angry Birds to make them appear to fly. The kids LOVED this.

*One of my 2nd grade classes only got to see me twice for a total of an hour so they printed fish inspired by Sandra Silberzweig.

Sandra Silberzweig "Wild Tribal Sun Fish"

Phew! Printmaking is a blast.
Thanks for stopping by! If you have any questions, please leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you.

2nd Grade Manila Jeepneys inspired by Robert Alejandro

What I love so much about the age of the internet is how much access we as educators have to our world teaching community. This year I've followed and learned from some amazing art educators here in the United States. One of which is Don Masse of Shine Brite Zamorano. He taught me that sharing living artists works with my students is a very effective instructional strategy. My kids are engaged in knowing that this particular artist is alive, working, and successful in their field. 

I took a riff off of Don's Jeepney stop motion animation lesson and adapted it for my ipad-less classroom. I designed a guided drawing, painting, and collage lesson instead. We had been studying landscapes in our painting unit, this city scape lesson was super fun!

I began by sharing an interview with the Filipino artist Robert Alejandro who's main message was to create, create, create!

I then showed my students examples of his graphic illustrations of Jeepneys as inspiration for our lesson. They discussed how Alejandro used color and pattern to design his Jeepneys. I also showed them real Jeepneys so they could compare them with buses they've seen in their community.

Their learning objective was to create a colorful, patterned Jeepney inspired by Alejandro's work and then add it to a collage cityscape using neutral colors.

Here are some of their results.

Thanks for stopping by!

"The Great Wave" by 2nd Grade inspired by Hokusai

These artworks were developed from a simple painting exercise and color theory review. I had wanted to review proper painting technique, paint blending, and the color order of the rainbow spectrum, so my students all painted a piece of paper to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding.  After that...well...I wasn't too sure where to go next with their work.

As I stared at their painted papers I turned one vertical and thought that the warm colors could be a sunset and the cool colors, the ocean. "A-HA!" I thought! We will cut these up into layers and create a landscape inspired by Hokusai's "The Great Wave of Kanagawa".

By Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) - Restored version of File:Great Wave off Kanagawa.jpg (rotated and cropped, dirt, stains, and smudges removed. Creases corrected. Histogram adjusted and color balanced.), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5576388

The art history geek squealed with glee! I love sharing important works of art with my students and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Even though the original work is a print without all the colors of the rainbow evident, but hey...we can make imaginative interpretations.

After I passed back their rainbow painted papers, I shared the original work of art with a presentation as well as this fun video to help motivate my artists.

I then demonstrated how we were going to cut and layer our painted paper to create our own versions of Hokusai's famous print. I also gave them brown painted paper to use for their boats.

They were then encouraged to add their own details with paint. Some students got really creative with their landscapes.
Here are some of the results!

Thanks for stopping by!

Earth Week: Kinder through 5th

Last week, we celebrated "Earth Day" every day in the art room. We used recycled materials to create our artworks. Thanks to some really wonderful staff and parents who provided us with recycled supplies, we had a bounty with which to work. I still have several boxes  CDs left over from the library donations!

Each class, we began by discussing why protecting our planet is important. Students from kindergarten up through 5th grade made points about how a healthy planet is good for all living things. We talked about how we can do small things like recycling to help with waste and pollution. One of our enduring themes was recycling plastics so that they don't end up in landfills, or worse, our oceans.

Ocean pollution is a real threat to our marine ecosystems. Almost all of my art students got the opportunity to recycle plastics in their art making as a way to re-imagine the material. Some classes went a step further in demonstrating art activism in creating a collaborative mural to raise awareness about ocean pollution.

Here are some examples of the work we did!

Kindergarten recycled CDs from the school library to make tropical fish! They used pattern and color to make the scales using sharpie markers and cut shapes for fins. They were incorporated into the art activism mural.

1st graders recycled mixed materials from donations and the art room scrap bins. They used collage techniques to create a recycled robot. One class got to use donated corn starch packing peanuts to make sculptures. Just add a dab of water, and VOILA!, they stick together! Another 1st grade class created Spring blossom trees with recycled paper bags.

R2D2!

BB8!

I love how she matched the Sharpie hair to the yarn she chose.

The magic of corn starch peanuts in action!

A baseball player at bat!

2nd graders recycled plastic bags and lamination trimmings from the library to assemble jellyfish. We talked about how sea turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and eat them, which makes them sick or even die.

I didn't capture too many  photos of this lesson...womp womp!

3rd graders recycled plastic bottles by cutting them and coloring them with sharpies to produce tropical fish sculptures to go with the art activism mural.

4th graders recycled CDs by producing mandala designs with sharpie markers. They showed radial symmetry in their compositions.

5th graders got an extra week to work on their clay sculptures due to a field trip that happened during clay week. We did make some time at the end of class to discuss Earth Day and how artists can use recycled materials to make powerful works of art.

My intermediate Pathways class assembled recycled robots as well, but used more advanced building techniques.

 

I think we had a great time making recycled artworks. I hope that my students learned about how they can make a difference in their art making as well taking care of their planet.  Here are some additional resources if my artists want to learn more about how artists use recycled materials to make fine works of art. 

veronika-richterova - Plastic Bottle Artist

Ten Earth Day Artworks