Our first unit in the new year was pottery. We spent three mornings at a pottery studio with a wonderful pottery teacher and the resulting creations were very impressive. As there were just three participants for this unit each student had a wheel to use.  On the first week all three made several pots.

During the second class they trimmed the pots, tidying up rough edges and putting a “foot” on the bottom if desired. They also had time to make things by hand if they wished.

The final class was spent glazing which took a while as there were many pots and numerous choices for designs and combinations. We were all excited to see the finished products after their final firing.

Before Christmas we did a short three week unit of coloured pencil drawing. We used both watercolour and wax or oil based coloured pencils. Just as my art teachers had done I had my class drawing fruit. Fruit are a manageable subject to be completed in a short time frame.  Even though the time was relatively short I stressed that the longer we spent building up colour with the non watercolour pencils the more depth and realism we could achieve. It was not just colouring in a sketch.

Our warm up exercises before drawing the fruit were to complete several solids concentrating on the light and dark areas, shadows and shading.

The final technique in our printing unit was monoprinting, so called because no two prints are ever the same.

We used leaves and grasses which were readily available outside. (It was a while ago, before the snow came). We tried different methods for making a print including applying ink directly to the leaves, rolling ink on glass then lifting it with the leaves and taking a negative print after the ink had been lifted. The detail we were able to achieve in the veins on the leaves was surprising.

We continued carving and printing our linocuts and designed a second smaller one each as well. Here  is a squirrel S12 carved .

The lino cut below shows the amount of carving required to create a design with little or no background. As you can see in the card the finished product looked great. L14 printed it in red ink and sponged extra colour  onto the paper after printing. I bought speedball printing ink for our second week and it worked well.

A15 printed her shoe in a few different colours and we are hoping to print it three times in colours which will work in her room then frame them.

My own linoprint is posted on my paintings page

As a lead up to creating some lino prints we spent one week designing potato prints. Although it may have seemed like a step back into kindergarten it was a good exercise to get everyone thinking about positive and negative designs and carving the mirror image of what they wanted to see in their final print. The lino blocks are of course a little pricier than potatoes so the preparation was worthwhile.

B11 created some car logos, cars being his current passion. I carved a leaf and some abstract patterns. There was a paisley design, a few names and letters, an eye and a quite impressive albeit mirrored image world map.

The following week we began by designing our lino cuts. Everyone had to decide whether they wanted to create a negative or positive design. One way you carve your design out of the lino block leaving lino around the design. The other method is to carve away all that is not your design so that it remains at the end to be inked. Once the designs had been transferred or redrawn on the lino blocks everyone started carving. The carving tools are very sharp. A few of the students made me nervous. Band aids were needed!

The first prints were done using Stampin’Up Craft ink and the coverage wasn’t too bad; the smoother the paper the better the print. I am going to get some ink specifically designed for block printing and see what the difference is.