Winter Printmaking

In January, we have been experimenting with a variety of different printmaking techniques.  Our first printmaking project was a mono print.  Mono printing is a form of printmaking that has images or lines that you can only be made once.

We wanted to make a pair of mittens that was the same. To do this we folded a piece of paper in half and traced one of our hands on one side.  Then we painted small sections onto the pencil outline.  While the paint was still wet, we folded our paper  in half so the paint would make a print on the opposite side of the paper.   We continued that process until the outline was complete and then added lines, dots, hearts, etc to fill in the rest.

Our second printmaking project was a block or lino print.  We used a styrofoam plate as our block and then "carved" into the styrofoam with a pencil.  Once everyone had "carved" a snowman on their styrofoam, we rolled on white paint with a brayer.  Then we flipped the styrofoam over and printed our image onto construction paper. We had to experiment with the amount of paint and pressure we used so we would get the best print.

For the last printmaking experiment we did we used Lego Duplo bricks.  After we made our beautiful ice castles out of real ice, we kept the excitement going.  We dipped the lego bricks into black paint and then printed the square/rectangle shape onto a paper.  As we printed, we made sure to make the shape of a castle.  The results were stunning.