Positive and Negative Leaf Prints

I've purchased enough gelli plates now that I can take them to school and 4 students can print at a time. In October, I had a gelli printing station. Each 2nd and 3rd grade student had a chance. I demonstrated a few techniques and then let student choose and combine how they saw fit. The most popular choice was using the positive and negative space of leaves with first generation and ghost prints.

 I had many texture combs, stamps and found objects available for students to use to create their first print. The students came around the printing table, asked me to squirt the color of acrylic paint they wanted to use, rolled it with a brayer, and pulled the print. They also printed the ghost of the texture/pattern.

The students who wanted to play with the positive and negative space then chose a second paint color, rolled it out, arranged a leaf or several vein side down, and chose one of their printed papers to print on AGAIN. Next, they removed the leaf and printed the ghost. The paper with the leaf ON the plate will have the negative space in the shape of a leaf, which acted as a mask. The ghost will have the positive space showing the texture of the veins. Gelli plates show a lot of detail and texture so this pretty much always turns out cool. Different print combinations- first/first, ghost/ghost, first/ghost, ghost/first yield different results. The students enjoyed exploring and playing with the possibilities.

You can see the lesson plan on the smARTteacher.

 Some students tried different ideas- layering textures or images drawn with cotton swabs.

You can make a homemade gelatin plate for printing, but I've never tried it. I've heard good things about it but buying some plates with Blick gift coupons was a quicker choice for me! I now have gelatin plates in 8x10, 6x6, 5x7, 3x5, and the 8 inch circle. I haven't even had time to try out the circle plate yet, but I'm looking forward to it!

What Would You Do...

...with this idea?
Idea: Printing heart shaped leaves and then __________.

Whenever I do a project with students using real leaves, (Yes, students, REAL leaves) the kids get so excited about redbud leaves since they are heart shaped. I wanted to do a quick, easy project with Kindergarten that involved printing the heart shaped leaves.

Because leaves are cool, printing is fun, and kids love hearts.

The pictures here are just little 5 minute experiments. I set up a different station at each table one day in October and sat at one of the tables to help students print their leaves. I gave them a quick demo then let them print their leaves and add lines and shapes with crayons. Oh, I waited too long and the redbud leaves were shot but then I noticed I could substitute morning glory leaves which are also heart shaped. The yellow paper is just because I happened to have extra yellow construction paper cut down. I think just using different colors would make this cooler. Maybe a Jim Dine meets Andy Goldsworthy idea? Or Andy Warhol for that matter...

Source: artnet.com via Katie on Pinterest

I thought I would try posing the question/problem to our little Art Teacher blogging community to see if anybody has a brilliant idea! I don't necessarily want this to be a "Fall" project, just something inspired by the shape... If you have a cool idea, please share! I want to collect lots and lots of ideas to add to the others I've come up with. I can try them out when the leaves are back and post the results.

3rd Grade Leaf Designs

Last year I did basically the same lesson with m 3rd grade students but had them use just two colors.  It created kind of an Op Art effect but confused the majority of my 3rd graders.  This year I wanted to keep some of the elements- overlapping to create positive and negative space and interesting shapes, and creating interesting compositions by filling the entire space.

I collected lots and lots of leaves to bring in for this project.  I also had projects using leaves planned for two other grades at the same time so the leaves were used several times.  I tried to find a variety of leaf shapes and sizes for the students to use.  I think I had one student in almost every class ask if the leaves were poisonous.... yes, my secret plan is to poison my students with leaves in Art class.  Anyway, the first class period was spent tracing leaves with pencil so that there was lots of overlapping and the space was filled.  Some students had time to start tracing their pencil lines with sharpie in the first class, the others traced in the second class.

 At the beginning of the second class, I showed the students how to trace the outline of the shape carefully before coloring in the middle.  If the students actually use that tip, they do a much nicer job getting things filled in to be nice and solid.  I showed examples from last year in our Artsonia gallery and told the students they could do the Op Art thing with two colors or use whatever colors they wanted- the only guideline with color was that no two shapes that touched could be the same color.  I found that I had to reiterate again and again that everywhere the leaves overlapped created a new shape.  Some still focused on each leaf as the shape and not the smaller sections.  Only a few students wanted to try the two color route, most used several colors.  I thought it was interesting to see the color combinations they came up with.  Some planned it out ahead of time, some would just choose one color at a time and probably used every marker color available.  Anyway, the projects were a big hit and got lots of positive comments when displayed in the hallway and I think I'll teach it again next year!

Kindergarten Wax Resist Leaves

This is a repeat lesson from last year.  The only real difference is that I used rainbow crayons instead of having the students peal regular crayons.  These projects always turn out really cool and the students think it's magic!

Stick leaves under paper with the veiny/bumpy side facing up and rub paper with crayons.  Keep the crayons flat!

Paint over crayon with watercolors to create a wax resist.  I let the students use whatever colors they wanted, I just asked them to fill all the white space.

Check out our Artsonia exhibit!