Mono Print Finished Art

While mono printing with this technique is an excellent invitation for parents to collaborate and create art together (without highjacking the work all together) only one of the images here is a true collaborative effort.* The rest of the singles I'm featuring were 100% the work of my young students. For the most part at the Toddler and Preschool age, images will be abstract shapes that kind of look like what the students will tell you they are drawing. Sometimes there are young artists that are very good at drawing what they see. In either case they are amazing.

For this lesson we drew on our printing paper with water resistant crayon or oil pastel, Students could trace the general outline of shapes onto the acetate sheets we used as mono printing plates, then flip that image over and then add colour with water soluble marker to the other side of the acetate.  We flipped the outline over so that the colours added to the image when we printed would match up with the drawing, other wise everything would be opposite.

While the colour was being added we soaked our paper in a water bath so that the images in marker would transfer onto our paper. When we were ready to print we used a squeegee to take away any extra moisture from the paper: The image transfers best when the paper is damp and not shiny wet.

*The group shot also has extra examples of collaborative parent child art. The cupcakes, butterflies and cats are parent participant art. The rest, including the animal face with the pink nose featured above; were all done by the children alone.