Today's Class- Today we looked at the medium of printmaking, an art form in which images (usually identical copies) are created from a fixed matrix. We looked at slide examples of woodcut, linocut, etching, lithography, monotype, and silkscreen, both historical and contemporary work. After that the class completed the first part in an exercise involving an additional type of printmaking, the collagraph.
How to make this up- All students will need to construct a collagraph plate, which is a printing plate made by attaching various things to a flat surface. (comes from the word "collage") The completed plate will be inked by rolling with black printing ink and printed onto paper. Above are a few examples from a previous semester. For this exercise, we used cardboard as the plate base (about 8" x 10"- the large panel of a cereal box is a good size) and attached cut bits of different kinds of fabrics, but you can use any kind of material you want, natural or manufactured, as long as it is relatively thin (no more than 1/8" thick). The print can be any design you want, as long as it is a recognizable image (person, object, scene, etc) and it must use items with at least 8 different textures. Below is an example of a collagraph plate (top) and the print made from it (bottom). Note that the color of the objects has nothing to do with the printed color, and that the image will print as a reverse (mirror) of the plate design, so if it matters what is on each side, or if you are going to include letters/numbers, they will have to be backwards on the plate. More information and additional examples can be found here.
Homework- The completed collagraph plate is due at the beginning of class on November 28, 2012. I will bring in the materials that day to print the plates.
The photography assignment is now due on November 14, 2012. We'll take time out of the class to look at examples of everyone's photographs.
Those who have not yet turned in the research assignment should complete it as soon as possible to receive partial credit.
For next class 11/14/12- We will begin our first major graded art project of the semester, our 2D (flat) project. Bring your 18" x 24" pad, pencil and eraser, and pastels.
