I heart printz.

Last week Mary substitute taught our class.  She taught us a method of art called callograph printmaking, which uses a build up of paper like a collage to create an image.  

Here are some examples of collograph prints that I enjoy:

Annie's Owl

Michele Landsaat

This lesson can be easily translated into one with children, as it is a simple form of this wonderful discipline.

We were first given a theme of monsters and some books for reference:

We would transfer the image by covering it with washable printing ink, then laying a piece of black construction paper on top of it, and finally smoothing over the back with our hands or a small roller.

Adnan's totally awesome print :)

*She had perfect squares drawn on the table cloth, so the image and paper would line up perfectly. (Really good for children!)

Then we cut out our image and placed it face up on top of an already painted square of plexi.  This would create a two color print when we placed our construction paper on top and rubbed.

Lucinda cuttin out her monster...

I can't wait to use this process with students (and again with my personal work!)  It's fun and simple with beautiful results!

class's prints.

my prints:  sea creature monster thing.

We briefly looked at each others graphic novels, and from what I saw, they looked great. Everyone took a different approach, but similar in the sense that either pen or pencil was the only drawing utensil used.  This project only used card stock, folded paper, and pencil or pen.  (Very do-able with students especially with limited resources.)

And, this week staying on the sea creature theme, I made a collage of sharks using a book that Jake gave me called "The Book of Sharks." :)

It had some beautiful illustrations of these scary animals.  This piece is called "Sharks have hearts too."