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!

Japanese Family Crests

Japanese Family Crests are similar in concept to a Western Coat of Arms. They were the inspiration for my 6th grade East Asian lesson for Cultural Heritage Week. If my internet sources are correct, Mon means "crest" and Ka-Mon means "family crest". 

I introduced the lesson with a PowerPoint, we discussed, and then I gave a quick demo. We focused on crests starting with a circle since many examples we saw have radial designs. When I was researching, I drew parallels between design elements in the crests and Yin-Yang. I found that Yin-Yang started in China but was used in Japan. That seems to be a trend in Japanese Art- adapting things that began in China. I don't know if any experts would mention Yin-Yang and Mon, but it made me feel like an Art Historian to see a possible connection and research it. :)

Japanese Crests Ka-Mon

The students found the center of their paper by using their paper to connect diagonal corners (the center of the resulting "X" is the center of the paper) and used that dot as the center point for drawing a circle with a compass. I always suggest that the students hold the compass steady and swivel the paper. That seems to work better for most of us than trying to rotate the compass without adjusting the size. After the circle was created, the students had tons of freedom as far as how to create their crests. I just ask them to try to achieve a balance of positive and negative space (we talked about how patterns are a good way to do this.) If the students didn't know where to start, I suggested they think of something that represents them or their family and simply that into a symbol or look through the examples for inspiration. Example: One student is really into Boy Scouts so he used a canoe paddle as the central image in his design. I found a great PDF with a lot of examples* that was easy to print off enough copies for each table. The PDF was a great resource for the students. After our quick reminder discussion about inspiration vs. copying prior to starting, everyone did a great job. This website also has a lot of images and this one has history and compares Japanese Crests to Coat of Arms.

*It's a small world! One of my students was really excited that he found his family crest in the PDF. He said his mother is half Japanese. I've seen a wide range of estimates about the number of Family Crests that exist and 10,000 seems to be middle of the road. What are the chances that I just happened to print off a PDF with a very small sample of Japanese crests and one of my students in Kansas found HIS family's crest? Pretty cool!

The first day was reserved just for drawing with pencil. Most students needed the majority of the second day to finish planning. I asked them to lightly mark with pencil which areas would be filled in black and to let me check it before they started with marker. I told them it's always good to have another set of eyes check to see if your patterns make sense. After getting their plans checked, the students set to work filling in the designated areas with black permanent marker.

3rd Grade Fall Project- Warm Weaving/Cool Leaf Printing

It took me so long to get all my fall lessons photographed last year that I just decide to save them up to post closer to the correct season. It's still technically summer while I'm typing this, but

1. I start back to school in 2 days.
2. The drought is making the leaves turn brown and fall to the ground so it looks a little bit like fall today.
3. I'm already thinking about lessons for the fall semester and you might be, too!

Back in my very first year of teaching (3 whole years ago seems like a long time now) I had planned a very similar lesson for 2nd grade but it took so long to weave, and I had a disastrous experience trying to print leaves with another grade, that it just stayed a weaving. I decided to be brave and try it with 3rd grade last year. We reviewed warm and cool colors (I tend to incorporate a lot of color theory) and the students identified warm colors as "fall colors". I explained that the students would be weaving using warm colored construction paper then printing leaves on top using cool colors. All except for a couple new students had learned to weave in Art class the year before so they didn't need much review aside from how to hold the folded paper to cut the warp and I had my early finishers help students who were struggling. I'm pretty sure we did this in one class period since I let the students choose from 6x9 inch construction paper instead of a full 9x12 inch sheet. After the strips were woven as tightly as we could get them, students with extra time added glue to the loose ends for extra security.

After the weaving was complete, I passed out trays to each table with green, blue, and purple tempera paint and 2 brushes for each color. We didn't want to make a mess on the tables, so I passed out some odd sized paper scraps for the students to brush on top of. It didn't take long for us to realize that the negative space of the leaf had possibility so we reviewed positive and negative space and turned this into a 2 part project! The students tried to make a nice composition with their overlapping negative space leaves as well as printing on their weavings.