Colored Pencil Sea Life

Students worked on colored pencil blending at the last class for the semester.  They traced a template of a sea turtle or fish and drew exaggerated the shapes you would find inside.  They did these on black paper which really makes the colored pencil illuminate.  They used analogous colors (colors next to each other on the color wheel look really nice together and blend well) and overlapped the colors to create this effect.  They turn out really nice!

Norman Rockwell Magazine Covers

The last project the older students worked on this semester was to design their own magazine cover.  This was after we studied the life of Norman Rockwell and enjoyed his amazing paintings and how he was such a master storyteller in his illustrations.  Students were given a list of magazine ideas or they could come up with their own...great opportunity to be creative.  We discussed elements of good design and they had to use some of these in their layout.  Then came the colored pencil technique which I will explain here:

After drawing your design, it is very important to erase your pencil lines so you cannot see it thru your colored pencil.  You will still see the lines faintly after erasing but because colored pencil is permanent, you will not be able to erase your pencil lines later.  I showed the students the image of the eye that I worked on from a magazine picture and showed them the two techniques- layering and burnishing.  This worked best to show in small groups at  a table in the back of the room so they could see the details.  Colored pencils need to be very sharp to use this method.  We used Prismacolor(I recommend the 48 color set) because of their wonderful blending ability.  Students were required to use the layering technique (2-4 colors) in their magazine cover and not to go too dark in the beginning.  Choosing analogous colors works well for this method.   With practice, this technique can create depth and realism and created a lot of interest with the colors showing through in the under-painting.

Collagraph

Grades 6-12 students completed their textured landscapes and used water-soluable printmaking ink in a variety of colors to pull a print. There were a few challenges to address in this project.  Students learned to mark the corners before pulling a print in order to line everything up correctly each time they layered a different color, they learned to work dark to light and how the colors can print over each other, and doing each color separately allows the colors to not dry out too quickly before pulling a print.  There were aspects of this project that were very bothersome...keeping all materials the same 1/4" height on the format and keeping items glued down for multiple prints.  I think next time I will work on a textured landscape and keep the format as their completed work, painting it all one color like Louise Nevelson might do.  Or another idea I had was to work on a canvas, adding texture to certain areas in the landscape while creating a painting. I really prefer the collagraph done with the sheets of craft foam.  I personally cannot stand working with craft foam for anything, with the exception of how beautifully they work for collagraph printmaking.

Grades 2-5 students created a collagraph printing plate using the craft foam sheets and had time to pull a print using a variety of colors.   Their assignment was to make a person using a variety of geometric shapes.  Their person needed to be doing some kind of activity.  Kids are so creative! They came up with cheerleaders, a person playing guitar, a runner, and many more ideas.  Sooo fun! Also, they could not overlap the foam or it would not be level and would not print properly.  For example, if they wanted to add a hat to the head, they had to cut off part of the head and separate the hat a bit from the head for it to look correct.  This project works best if they separate each piece from the one next to it, leaving a little gap.

Printmaking is such a hectic class for me to teach, with messy ink, students moving around the inking station, and rotating the students through so that everyone has time to print.  I sadly had no time for photos at this class.  Hopefully you can gain from my descriptions of the projects we did and for those of you with students, can see these concepts in the projects they brought home. I did get this photo at home of  a print that I pulled from my student's collagraph.  I just love her cheerleader!