Bulding a City

Introduction to Printmaking

This week we began the our most challenging art project yet! I found this project for creating city-scapes on pinterest listed as a "project for 3rd graders", but as we all know the kindergartners at MMS are very capable. They certainly lived up to my expectations!

During this first class (of a two class project) we began with practice drawings buildings in sketchbooks. We focused on filling the the bottom of the page with buildings. We talked about how buildings vary greatly in shape and size. Some are tall and thin, some short and squat. Roofs could be triangular, round, flat or really any shape that the kids liked. The children had free reign within the space of their sketchbooks to explore and create their own styles of buildings. We then added details to our buildings. Think: windows, doors, roof tiles, chimneys, fire escapes (awesome!), among many others. Here are a few examples of the beautiful work done in sketchbooks today.

 After this we began the more challenging part of the class. Each child got a rectangle of white scratch board. If you have never used scratch board, it is almost like a very thin, stiff, white foam board. If you draw on scratch board with medium pressure and a dull pencil your lines sink into the material. You end up creating a textured drawing. Later, when we roll paint across these boards paint will not be able to sink into the lines that were drawn. This creates the effect of a "reverse drawing" where everything that wasn't drawn gets printed and the lines that were drawn remain white. If that sounds confusing, wait until next class. You will see what I mean!

What is hard about this part of the project is getting the right level of pressure with the pencil: enough to make a groove, but not enough to poke through. The children did really well.. Here a couple of examples of the scratch board printing plates that were created today.

Next class we will be rolling these plates with ink and making multiple prints on different colors of paper!

NOTE: Art work will be coming home next week! Keep an eye out for art to come home on Tuesday! Also, your child will have a couple of pieces on display in the holiday show. After the show, please collect your child's work and bring that home as well. We need to be sure that the sanctuary is back to normal before the holiday break. Thank you!