Love printmaking? Try these lessons!

I've rediscovered printmaking over the last month or so. I love printmaking because it is easy and can be done on the cheap. Well, sort of. The process is always so fun for the students and the results are magical--I love to watch them "ooh" and "aah" over their prints!

Well, here's a round-up of some past printmaking lessons from my site that may have you rocking and rolling with your students!

Matching Mittens with Found Object "Snow" Prints

USING FOAM TRAYS:
Reduction Prints (Using Styrofoam trays and found objects)
Andy Warhol Self Portraits (Using Styrofoam trays and a pencil to "carve" an image)
Reduction Print Selfie (Using Styrofoam tray and gradually removing portions of it between inkings)

USING CRAFT FOAM:
Haunted Houses (Using sticky-backed foam shapes)
Fall Banner (Using foam shapes to make stamps--can be changed for any theme or season)

FOUND OBJECTS AS STAMPS:
Create Your Own Stamps (Using found objects and wine corks to make your own stamps)
Matching Mittens and Snowflakes (Cut paper mittens with found object "snow")
Focal Point Fruit Prints (Using an apple or pear to print--exploring focal point too).
Leaf Prints (This is mine, it's from Deep Space Sparkle, but it is my go-to early finisher activity in the fall).
Modern Day Adinkra Cloth (Using stamped symbols on sections of card stock that are joined together into one "cloth")
Spring Forsythia Still Life (Using pieces of sponge to make a lovely arrangement of forsythia blossoms)
Not-So-Scary Dancing Skeletons (Uses doggy bone treats for unique stamps)

USING YOUR HANDS:
Andy Warhol Hand Prints (Seriously one of my most popular posts, but not mine--from Artolazzi--so easy!).

And one of my all-time popular posts--
Quick Andy Warhol Hand Prints

Drawing American Sign Language Hands

My private art lessons are very organic-what we study ebbs and flows with what I think the student would be interested in or in an area they may need to develop further. One day, my student and her mom were discussing a piece my student had done (at home) and there was some, ahem, disagreement as to how readable the hand was in the drawing. After a little more discussion, my student admitted that, although she felt she drew hands perfectly fine, they were "hard" and she "hated drawing them." Hmmmm...well, never one to shy away from a challenge, I tried to think of a way we could practice drawing hands in a way that seemed fun. 

This spells "ART."

So, here's what we did:

The first week, we spent practicing drawing hands in different positions. I found this great tutorial online at Neon Dragon Art that I thought would work well to illustrate the anatomy of the hand as well as seeing a hand as a 3D form from the beginning. We worked our way through the different variations Jessica "Neon Dragon" Peffer presented, using our own hands as "models." It is quite difficult to draw something as complex as the human hand--especially when you don't want to! But we kept trying and trying. We had a couple shaky starts and we needed to keep remembering to look at our 3D models--our own hand, and draw what we saw, not what we thought was there.

Once my student was confident drawing hands in a variety of positions, I brought out the American Sign Language chart that shows the letters of the alphabet using photos of hands. We practiced the letters and she chose a word she wanted illustrate. At first she chose "CREATE" but the thought of drawing 5 more hands (one for each letter of the word) proved too much so she settled on "ART" instead.

She did a great job drawing the hands in pencil and then outlining them in Sharpie. For the background, she chose to do a Jackson Pollock-inspired drippy painting using watercolors and temperas that she drizzles and splattered all over. The colors were custom-mixed--she had a plan--they are her favorite colors.

Once everything was done, she brought the pieces together (making sure the hands were in the correct order). She was very happy with her piece (as am I!) and *hopefully* she'd say it isn't too bad drawing hands after all.