Even homeschool moms need to take a Proffessional Development Day once in a while *grin*. Well yesterday our school's art teacher aka 'me' travelled to Quadra Island to take part in a day class with an amazing artist, Richard Calver, and get a crash course in the basics of block printing. I've ran across some really cool lino block prints done by my favorite artists and I have wanted to give it a try for some time, so when the chance arose to be able to learn how, I was there!
Our pre-class homework was to come up with a simple 3.75 x 5 inch drawing that could be printed in 4 different colors. I love Japanese family crests and the above tree trunk is similar to some of them and then I thought that it would be neat to make it with three circular tree tops joining together like a family tree :) And there you have my simple drawing all ready for the first printing.
Unfortunately there just wasn't enough time for us to make four different blocks for each stage of printing, so we used our one block cutting away sections of it each time before we reprinted it with a new color.
Until all that was left was my tree trunk and border :) I actually like the trunk all by itself to and did a bunch of black and white prints of just it to *grin*.
This is one of my final prints. I did 6 in total plus one on fabric to see how that worked out. It's a very limited edition. LOL. We experimented with different amounts of pressure to see how the colors would blend together. Above I used a lighter touch on the leaf area so that the yellow would show through the greens and browns making it look more like a fall tree, while keeping the trunk of it solid colored :)
All in all it was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to trying more! K is going to really enjoy learning this as well. See, it really was a Pro D Day.... I'm going to share what I learned. *grin*
I picked up this really cute book at the library called Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh. It's a fun little story about 3 mice that play in some paint pots and learn about mixing colors :)
It was perfect timing because I had also ran across a great way to learn about color theory over at Make & Takes using ziploc bags for mixing colors inside. A fabulous no mess idea!! So we gathered up our 3 primary colors: red, yellow and blue, a couple of ziploc bags and of course the camera :)
It turned out great. L smooshed the ziploc bags around to blend the two dots of paint and we ended up with a beautiful display of what each of the primary colors mixed together created.
Blue and red makes purple
and yellow and red of course creates orange :)
Now that we have learned what secondary colors can be made from the primary colors I think we'll move on to what tertiary colors can be created from them :) Fun!!
