Year 7 Linocuts over Tissue Paper Collage

Here are some incredible lino prints from the Year 7 class I've been working with while doing relief. Their usual art teacher came up with this amazing idea of creating a collage out of ripped up pieces of tissue paper then printing an insect themed design over the top. So effective!

The kids first spent some time creating their designs, then once they were happy with one they transferred the design onto lino using white transfer paper. I helped the students to trace their design onto paper using a light box. The important part of the process is then turning the transfer around and drawing through the lines onto the other side of the paper using the light box and then using this side to create the collage backgrounds on. I made sure to demonstrate this process because it can be tricky for kids to think in reverse when working with lino.

Year 7 Charcoal Drawings

I have been working as a Visual Arts relief teacher at a Secondary school for the last four weeks and was invited to write a project for a Year 7 extension class. I decided to teach the kids about German Expressionism, focusing particularly on high contrast woodcuts. I got the kids to first trace photographs of dogs with pencil and then apply expressive mark making techniques with their charcoal. I think the results are really striking!

They are now creating two designs based on photographs of their own pets in preparation for creating a lino-cut. They will have to choose the design that they think is most effective in capturing the essence of Expressionism.

Cherry Blossoms and Pandas with my 7-10 class

For the last two lessons we have been looking at Japanese and Chinese scrolls. I have been collecting lots of sticks from my back garden in preparation for this project. We began by painting large pieces of paper with mixes of pink, yellow and white. Some students deliberately aimed to emulate a bright sunset in their backgrounds while others added lots of white for a more subdued effect. Once dry, I showed the kids how to draw branches with black ink, starting thick at the bottom corner and gradually getting thinner. We then applied the cherry blossoms by dabbing small areas of bubble wrap in pink, red and white paint and printing over the top of the thinner branches to create a varied effect.

While the paint dried the kids learnt how to draw realistic and cartoon pandas and prepared the room for a mini-exhibition. We then wrapped the ends of the scrolls around the sticks at the top and tied string to each end. I taught the students about the different roles involved in setting up an exhibition and they got very excited about being little curators!