Printmaking in Painting And Drawing

I love the concept of relief printmaking with kids. Over the last few years of teaching at Artspace I've included printmaking in one form or another at least once in each term. I have a few different types of printmaking techniques I've used and one of my favourites is using Styrofoam plates to create a relief print. I have been playing with the idea to add a multi-lesson reductive two or three colour printing lesson to this terms plan. It's a daunting plan, there's a lot to keep in mind: alignment of paper, reverse images, inking, carving and studio management.

I've put off the lesson for a few weeks as I've mulled these things over. While I think I've gotten some aspects figured out; there are others that I'm still feeling unsure about.

Back Into The Swing Of Things

Not that we've been out of the swing of things... perhaps what I mean is getting out of the Halloween imagery:

and onto something less holiday specific.

One of the challenges I'm finding with my Painting and Drawing class this term is the range of ages that my young artists fall into. I've found myself adjusting my lesson plans so that my younger students don't feel frustrated by their skill level and again so that my older students will still be engaged with the lesson. It's a thrilling juggling act and one that I take very seriously. I want my young artist friends to get as much out of our hour together as possible.

The images in this post are from a Painting and Drawing Pro-D camp I taught last week where the age range is about the same as for my weekly class. Regardless of what age my students are I am always able to talk to them about a part of their process that I watched them work through and what about their finished work I am really excited to see. While they are working I am also able to guide them in how they are approaching the project, sometimes giving them some insight that they might not have seen on their own. In some cases they have a very specific idea in mind and their finished art exceeds my expectations with very little input from me. Those are my favourite moments as a teacher; the ones where I get to learn something from my students.

As we move into November I've got some great new projects lined up for the Preschool classes and a multi week project for my older students that I am very excited to get started on.


If you are an art teacher how do you balance lessons with a varied skill level class room? Please share in the comments below.

And Just Like That

We are at the end of October.

In the spirit of All Hallow's I had Artsparks, Arts Enrichment and Art Exploration classes create Itsy Bitsy Spider Mobiles in the style of Rebecca Emberly. My Painting and Drawing students used charcoal and very thinned tempera to create Fox and Crow paintings and for All Hallow's We're revisiting The Fox and the Crow and adding a dash of bats for Art Exploration.

Painting and Drawing used The Fox and the Crow by Manasi Subramaniam as inspiration to paint these works of art. All of them are frameworthy.

I'll be revisiting this book today with my Art Exploration classes in character as the fox.

Where's The Elephant, Cat Paintings and Pro D Camp work

It's really tempting to go in depth with each lesson I teach. Sometimes i's nice to just let the finished art speak for itself. 

Where's The Elephant? Art Sparks

Paint scraped over oil pastel cat drawings Arts Enrichment

Leaf Paintings Painting & Drawing

Pro-D Camp Eve

I have finished art from the last handful of classes to share. And I will but my schedule has been hectic and I haven't had a chance to get the images uploaded yet. they are coming I promise.

In the meantime here's a time lapse of what I've got planned for my Professional Development Camp tomorrow morning. I've got two very big groups to work with tomorrow!

The Way Way Upside to Teaching to the Toddler and Preschool Set

Every child is an artist. 

The problem is how to 

remain an artist once we 

grow up. Pablo Picasso

And how you do that is by making a point to make art with toddler and preschool aged children as often as possible. In the two plus years that I've been teaching art to children and the two or so weeks I've  been posting about teaching art to children here; I've mentioned a smattering of times that my expectations for the final artworks for each of my art lessons is always exceeded by my little artists. 

It's how they approach making art that really does it. And it's really not that they all approach art making in the same way because boy do they not do that. What I mean is that they walk into the studio excited about making art. Even my highly anxious young artists dive into making art. Sure there are days that are better than others, there are days that the materials we use and the subject matter doesn't really do it but even on those days there is some form of visual expression that they can get behind. Even if it's just the first few minutes of class with markers and sketchbook the act of making art makes them happy.

In this week's Art exploration lesson I was treated to some serious observational skills from one of my young artists. An exploration of the materials and techniques used in the class that pushed outside the really good moment, pulled it back and pushed it further combined with a unique application that gave the creator's a super finished art work.

The lesson incorporates one of my favourite paint application techniques: gift card paint scraping and rolling. We also stamped into the painting with contrasting white paint. I pre-cut cat shapes and chalk pastel was used to add detail to the cat before it was glued down to the painting.

A moon, A Tree, an Owl and Masks

One big post about this week's classes. That's how I'm doing things this week, cramming lots into one little space....

on Tuesday I had my Arts Enrichment students practice using scissors and using both a brush and an eraser topper to apply paint creating a full moon backdrop for an owl collage. I read Moon Child to get us started. It's a lovely book that follows three nocturnal creatures as they relate to the moon in the sky. The music and movement portion of our class has us curling up into a ball just like one of the illustrations in the story and it was so much fun seeing my young friends make that connection.

I've mentioned using scissors is challenge for preschool and toddler artists. I took a trick I found online to help give my young artists the proper holding position for cutting with scissors. I had  everyone hold up their scissor hands and give the thumbs up sign. My co-teacher and I then went around the studio and drew a smiling happy face on their thumb nail. When they had the happy face smiling at them they knew that the scissors were being held correctly, cutting wen t much better with our happy thumbs.

I had a cancelation for an appointment on Tuesday in the afternoon which gave me time to make more low poly paper masks for my painting and drawing class Tuesday afternoon. I actually got some photographs of the still life set up and the final paintings were beyond what I thought I'd get.

My students each approached the still life differently. Some carefully observed how each of the low poly shapes aligned together creating a drawing and then painting that was proportional, others used the masks as a jump point and painted more symbolically and other's took the shapes within each low poly mask and used them to create a pattern within the drawing which they then painted.

I had each student look at the masks and name the part of the mask that was the whitest or lightest area, where the darkest shadows were and then to make note of the areas that were midtone. I then had them sketch from the still life, They then painted the highlight area white, the dark areas black and the midtone areas grey.