Yet Another Idea for Printimaking

I was looking at some samples of student art work that I had accumulated over the years and came across these fish paintings. The lesson itself was based on warm and cool colors and was taught to kindergarten students. It also had a science component to it as we had to look at fish and determine what parts we needed to create an image of the fish.

As motivation for the lesson I read A Fishy Shape Book by David and Joan Wylie. This book shows a fish created from a variety of basic shapes. It ask the question is it a circle fish? Is it a square fish? And so on. The illustrations are simple and it show students how to add shapes together to create the image of a fish. This is only one of the fish books written and illustrated by this couple.

After looking at the book students would draw a shape on the paper with a crayon. Then we would talk about what we needed to add to create the head, fins and tail. I would often show slides of real fish and we would try to decide what shape best represented the body of the fish to further our study of fish. The idea is to get them to think beyond the circle with a triangle fish that they are often taught to draw.

Having drawn our fishes, we then focused on color. We would divide colors into two families, the warm family or the cool family. Each child would then select a color family for there fish and paint it. To create the scales the students would use piece of cardboard stamped on to the surface of the fish. This was done by standing the cardboard on end in black paint and then pressing the painted cardboard on to the fish.

Here's a tip for painting with tempera with young children. Empty egg cartons make great paint trays. You can put some color in each of the sections. When the painting is done you simply throw it away. Makes clean up easy!

Balloons and Paste

PINATAS!
Week six at our class proved to be an interesting experiment in how long a two year-old can spend dipping their hands in paste. The instructor decided that this would be a good time to try papier mache. So balloons in hand we began.

Of course, since the children are young, they were more interested in playing with the balloons than using them as armatures for pasting. To help with this we were each given two, one for play and another which we taped onto a plastic container to prevent it from rolling around the table while we worked with it.

For paste we used a flour paste which is simple to make and not too pricey. I prefer Pritt Paste. It is available at most craft stores for about $1.49 per box. One box makes a gallon of paste and it stores quite well if covered tightly. It does get a little more watery this way. Left uncovered it will form a crust which can be peeled off but it will last only about a week this way before it starts to dry up. The difference is that it sticks together better than the flour paste and dries faster.

Secondly, we used strips of newspaper. The strips should be torn not cut as the rough tear edge helps the pieces to blend together. When tearing newspaper, you should tear with the grain. It is pretty easy to find out f you are tearing the right way. If you tear with the grain you will get nice long straight tears; against the grain the paper tears off in small uneven tears. You should tear a good pile before you start. You will be surprised how much paper it takes! Once you have torn the long strips you should tear them into pieces about 2 inches long for easy handling.

The rest is pretty simple. You dip the newspaper strips in the paste wipe off the excess and then press it onto the surface of the object that you are using as your armature. completely cover the surface with newspaper. The more layers of paper the harder the structure when done. If you are working with more that one child, you will need to take a plain piece of paper for writing the child's name and that should be applied last. I liked to use either unprinted newspaper or paper towels for the last layer. This gives you a plain surface for finishing and also helps you see that you have put at least two complete layers on the surface. Take some paste and rub the entire surface with it to smooth out the surface. Let it dry.

When the object has dried, you can decide how you are going to finish it. I will show you what we did with the balloons after the next class.

RECIPE FOR FLOUR PASTE
1 cup of flour
1 cup of water
1 teaspoon of salt to prevent mold formation
Basically you need an equal amount of water and flour and a small amount of salt. Mix until there are no lumps.

Art Class = Week Five Painting Our Clay

Well, we finally made it to the painting stage of this class. The class was broken into two parts.
One part was glazing the clay tiles that were made three weeks ago and the other was a large painting project. This was mainly because there wasn't enough room for all of the children to glaze their pots at the same time.

Leah loves to paint in any form so despite her cranky mood (She seemed very unhappy this morning which is unusual for her.) she dove right into the painting process. I'll let the picture speak for itself. We worked with low fire clay and lead free glazes which is great if you have access to a kiln. I would like to offer an alternative since most of us do not have a kiln.

You can buy great self -hardening clays. They can be very expensive at a craft store as you get a small amount. Check your phone book to see if there is a pottery studio nearby as they usually are a good supplier of large quantities of self-hardening clay. I always used Portland Pottery Supply. I could purchase 25lbs for around $50.00. This sounds like a lot but it keeps well if wrapped up tightly. They can be handled the same way as low fire clay. The objects simply have to air dry. They are a little more fragile but this never seemed much of a problem.

When the clay projects dry, they can be painted with watercolors because the clay still absorbs moisture. The color soaks right into the clay. After the paint drys coat the object with Jazz clear gloss medium or Liquitex gloss medium. This helps to brighten the colors and preserve the clay from moisture. The fish mask is one that I made many years ago in a fifth grade art class using these products.

Found Object Printmaking

You know that old saying: "life has a way of interrupting your plans" or something like that. Well, I had planned to write at least 4 blogs per week but I haven't been able to find the time to sit down and do it. Here is the second of the printmaking ideas. Some people have a problem with using food to make art so I want to offer this alternative.

Materials needed:
A sponge brush or other painting tool
any color of tempera paint
Objects you find in your home
paper

The process is the same as with vegetables. I spent about two minutes looking in my kitchen drawers to come up with the objects that I chose to paint. I found a cork, a wooden spool, a fork, a chopstick, a plastic cookie cutter of a tree, a tea light in a metal container, a potato masher. a pencil eraser and a pastry blender.
The potato masher is perfect for young children because a child can stamp it in the paint and then stamp it on the paper. It creates an interesting grid shape. The cork, the thread spool or pencil eraser can work the same way. You get a clearer picture from the fork tines if you paint the paint on the fork rather than pressing it in the paint. The pastry blender also works best if the paint is paint on to it because sometimes the paint builds up between the spaces when it is just pressed into the paint.

You might wonder what you could do with these stamped images. They are great for teaching about patterns, repetition and sequencing. All of these are skills needed to understand the voice of language or simple mathematics. The are great for creating original wrapping paper. (You can use grocery store paper bags for the paper. Just cut them open and lay them flat) If you use an acrylic paint (Be sure to dress your child in clothing that is not precious to you as the acrylic paint is non-washable.), you can print images on t-shirts or aprons. To set the paint, iron the fabric on a hot setting between two pieces of paper. When printing a t-shirt, place a stack of newspaper inside the shirt to prevent the paint from going to the back. These make wonderful gifts or terrific art shirts!

class 4...Vegetable Printing

Wow! What a crazy week this has been! Too much to do and too little time for me!
This week in the pre-school art class we worked with two different media but I am only going to talk about one for now, VEGETABLE PRINTING.

With the high cost of fresh vegetables this is not necessarily the cheapest of art projects but it does offer some interesting results. I am going to talk to you about how to do this and some other possibilities for printing tools. You'd be surprised by the variety of printing tools you have right in your own kitchen.

We worked with celery, heads of cabbage, potatoes, carrots, green peppers and onions. This sounds like the ingredients for a nice vegetable soup. Unfortunately, the vegetables were not edible when we were done. The instructor provided squares of paper, knives for the adults to use and washable tempera paint. The paper was unsatisfactory for printing as it had a texture which inhibited the image from printing cleanly. Most people would turn to washable paint when working with young children. This isn't necessarily a great idea for print making with vegetables. You see the vegetables have water in them so they water down the paints which already have limited pigment (the stuff that makes the color) in them . This combined with the textured paper really effected the results. The paint was applied by pressing the vegetable into a meat tray that had paint in them. Meat trays make great paint holders for this project.
The images are made by having the child stamp the image onto the paper in an up and down motion.

When I have done this with young children, I used regular tempera. You might ruin an old shirt but the colors are brighter and the images are much clearer. Sometimes pressing the image into the paint results in an uneven coverage of paint on the vegetable. Using a small paintbrush or a sponge brush to paint the vegetable surface gets an more even coating resulting in a much clearer image. A smooth white paper or brown packaging paper like that used for mailing packages is a great surface for printing. Remember that their hands are small so limit the size of the pieces of vegetable that you are using.

I've included some images that you might expect to get using vegetables. Since this blog is getting too long. I'll write about printing with found objects in the kitchen tomorrow.
In the first picture, the image on the left is made from a potato that has been cut in half. The middle image is made from an onion and the images on the right have been made with a hunk of red cabbage. The images in the second picture are made from a slice of green pepper and an apple that has been cut open. When sliced horizontally rather than vertically, you will find a nice
star-shaped image. The potato can also be cut into a variety of shapes. Here I have cut a heart shape out of it. It's a great way to print cards or wrapping paper for special occasions.

Art class for two-year-olds

I attended an art class for two-year-olds today with my granddaughter. It was the final catalyst for me to start a blog about the importance of art in any child's education. I loved Leah's openess to the process. She seemed to relish the opportunity to stick her hands in the finger paints and squish the color between her fingers. Applying it to the paper was secondary but eventually created the desired response. "I need green," she would say as she was smearing the purple onto the surface. "See Grammy. See the colors!" She allowed me to share her paper, encouraging me to add more color. I started to show her how I could use my hands to create different types of lines and shapes.
"Look Grammy! I made grass!" And indeed her lines moving upward did look like grass.

I have wanted to start this blog for months, ever since the economy started to collapse. I had concerns that with limited funds the arts programs in our schools, which have already been plundered by the increased load of tests, would begin to disappear from our curricula completely. You see, I grew up in the generation where arts programs in our schools began in junior high. Any formal art class in the elementary program was the result of an individual teacher's love ot the arts or a random coloring exercise which had very limited instruction. Yet I became an art teacher and an artist in spite of it all. I was one of the lucky ones, though, as I had an uncle who was an art teacher in another community. His house was an opportunity for me to explore art materials and the joy of creating.

Let me tell you a little about myself and perhaps that will help you understand my purpose in writing this blog. I was an elementary art teacher in Westbrook, Maine for 23 years. Though certified to teach art in kindergarten to high school levels, I chose to work with the youngest children because this is where the magic begins. Although I was labeled an art educator, I referred to myself as a literacy teacher. After all art is a language. It is the first written language of a child. That first line drawn with a crayon on a piece of paper is the child's way of telling you what he knows or understands about his world. Although it may look like a scribble to you, to the child it has meaning. When my first husband was studying at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., I was the Assistant to the Director at an inner-city daycare which was a pilot program for using the arts to teach math and reading skills to preschoolers. This gave me ample opportunity to observe how the arts help children learn. (More about this later)

Through this blog I hope to share not only my view of the arts but ways in which you can advocate for art education in your schools and why. I will share some of the lessons I used with young children and some of my own artwork. I also hope to hear from you. What do you want to know? What are your experiences with children in the arts? What do you want me to explore further? I hope to share books and articles with you that I have found helpful in my journey into the arts with children. You see this is my first blog. I am absolutely new to this idea. If my daughter Sarah (read choiceofpies.blogspot.com) hadn't encouraged me, I might never have thought of it at all.
Talk to you tomorrow.