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.