Mixed Media Sea Horse Gelli Prints

This year I decided to teach summer school, only 15 schools days over a 3 week period.  It's shorter hours and much more lax than the regular school year.  So I said why not, I can always use the extra cash.  Lucky for me the name of the course is "Arts with a Twist." I only have about 45 4th and 5th students I see and I get to see them every single day!!!!  Kind of exciting right? means I'm used to seeing the students like once every two weeks.  

Any way I'm using the opportunity to experiment with some things I haven't been able to do and always wanted to try.  Seeing the smaller groups also gives me the luxury to do projects I would never be able to do with a larger group.

For our first project the class started by tearing newspaper and gluing it onto a white piece of paper.  We then used watered down white acrylic paint to whitewash of the the newspaper.  The next day we came back and drew a seahorse on the back (the opposite of the newspaper).  They cut out the seahorse silhouette, flipped it over to the newspaper side and drew on top to make the seahorse details.  Then using oil pastels, colored pencils, and/or crayons students colored in the seahorse.  My only instruction was to blend and overlap the colors in someway.  Any scraps were used to create seaweed.  

Have you ever heard of a Gelli plate? I had seen the idea of using gelatin for printmaking and became intrigued.  I did some investigating and ran across the Gelli Plate. I also saw the price tag....yikes! So I researched some more and found a way to make my own.  IT IS AWESOME.  We used stencils to print our underwater background.  I find the result quite stunning! What do you think?

Here are some detail shots of the texture the newspaper gives.  I also love that you can still see the text.

I love this big jello rectangle.

1st Grade Fall Prints "Autumn Elegance"

1st graders are taking their first look at printmaking.  As the fall season has arrived we are doing, what I like to call, an "Autumn Elegance" inspired project.  Using real, pressed leaves students experimented with printing leaves.

Collected Leaves:

Using gold paint students painted on the vein side of the leaves and printed on black paper by holding a paper over the leaf and rubbing gently with their hand.

Taking the project a little further we discussed how we see artwork in an art museum.  We came up with the conclusion that art in an art museum is usually presented with a frame.  To finish our project 1st graders could pick between these colors; red, yellow, green, and orange (keeping along with the fall theme.) We talked about the word "matte" and using the color students chose they matted their leave prints with glue.  Students were to try their best to center their print on the matte. With oil pastels students created a pattern around their frame.