Printmaking

For this project, we made spring time prints.

The procedure:

• students choose a spring object to draw with the prompt, "When I think of spring, I think of ..."
• draw the object chosen lightly with pencil on a 12 x 18 piece of light colored construction paper
• use the majority of the paper
• lay down newspaper and get a paint palette
• chose objects to dip in the paint in order make a print inside of the drawing - for example, wheels to make tire tracks, golf ball to make little circles, or the bottom of a thimble to make larger circles
• fill up the inside of the drawing with prints
• allow to dry and then cut it out

I wasn't quite sure what to draw that reminded me of spring, so I went with a flower. The prints I used are:

• the wheel of a small car to print the green on the stem
• a marshmallow dipped in brown to print the leaf
• a thimble to print red in the middle of the flower
• the side of a sponge to print red and blue for the flower petals
• a Q-tip to outline each part

I liked how we used 12 x 18 size paper to be able to draw the objects large enough to be able to tell that there were print patterns inside each part. I enjoyed planning out what print to use for each part of my flower. I appreciated that there were many types of objects to choose from to make the prints.

An extension activity would be to study the seasons and draw an object that reminded them of each of the seasons. The students would present their prints and why that object reminded them of that season.