Print

Children respond readily to colourful, eye-catching printed images in advertising, packaging, fabrics and picture books. As their powers of observation and discrimination are developed they begin to understandhow the printed image is used in the world around them and how to use it themselves. Print-making at primary level is about creating, organising and balancing shapes, spaces, pattern and texture. It can range from simple single images to highly developed designs. These can be built up by overlapping and juxtaposing shapes, textures or colours, and the overall effect should be one of simple, bold shapes.

As with painting, children should have opportunities to look at and touch a wide variety of natural and manufactured objects that focus attention on shape, pattern, texture and colour. They should be encouraged to talk about the similarities and differences they find and about how they might interpret them in a print design.

Through experience already gained in drawing and painting, they will understand the need to experiment with a variety of print materials and tools to see the effects they can achieve. It is also important that children understand and appreciate the differences between painted and printed surfaces, as this will influence their use of print-making media and how they organise their print designs. Looking at examples of printed images in evidence around them and at the work of artists who use shape, texture and colour to create bold images and designs will help to clarify this.

Starting points for printmaking

Experimenting with materials and tools to find out what can be done with them is an essential introduction to printing. Only when children have an understanding of this can they begin to design for the medium. Exploring materials and tools and the work of print-makers are therefore suggested as the more appropriate starting points for expressing ideas as printed images.

Focusing on materials and tools

Focusing on print-making materials and tools gives children opportunities to

• enjoy the excitement of discovering print marks
• make choices about materials and techniques.

Any natural or manufactured objects that have interesting shapes or textures would be suitable for print-making. It is useful to store collections of suitable print-making bric-à-brac in boxes. This would include plain and corrugated card, fabric scraps (hessian, for example), textured wallpaper, string, wood and parts of old utensils, tools and machines. Suitable surfaces for printing onto would include varieties of paper, card and fabric. Either water-soluble ink or tempera paint may be used; if the latter, it may need to be thickened with liquid soap or PVA glue to achieve a sufficiently tacky consistency or to prevent it drying out too quickly.

Print-making resources for this curriculum could include:

• water-based printing ink
• printing rollers
• tempera paint
• soft pads for transferring ink to a printing surface
• brushes for transferring paint to a printing surface
• flat, non-porous surfaces to roll out the ink on, for example glass, Perspex, Formica, metal, plain ceramic tiles, acetate
• a collection of natural and found objects for making prints
• white crayon or wax candle
• oil pastels
• screens for silk-screen printing
• a variety of papers, card and fabrics to print onto
• newspaper or oilcloth to cover work surfaces.

Practical starting points for print-making

The curriculum proposes a variety of approaches to print-making. They are:

• relief printing, including
  • printing where the print surface is raised by sticking on items, for example string
  • printing where the print surface is raised by cutting around it, for example potato prints
  • relief printing, which is further developed by masking out some of the printed areas and taking another print
  • relief printing made with designs incised in clay slabs, or with textured items pressed into the clay
  • rubbings
• monoprinting
• stencilling, and, as a development, silk-screen printing.

Traditional school activities such as waxtransfer, wax-resist and rubbings can be used as parallel techniques to printing and can even be combined with printing for mixed-media effects. Rubbings are a good introductory or parallel activity to printing. They can be taken from a variety of surfaces and can be used to focus attention on texture and pattern.

Some of the work that is produced can be kept for collage work, and some can be further developed by the children by drawing into them with markers or by using them to print on. 'Pictorial rubbings' can be made by drawing, cutting out and arranging shapes (abstract or theme-based). These are placed under a sheet of translucent paper and rubbed with the side of a dark crayon. The shapes can be moved around, repeated, overlapped or reversed as the composition grows. The work should be mounted on a backing sheet. Understanding of shape, texture and composition are enhanced by this process.

Initial experiments in printmaking

These could involve printing from a variety of found objects, plastic bottles, bits of wood or objects with a raised texture or pattern, using water-based printing ink or thickened tempera paint. Starting with one colour only will help children to concentrate on the effects of the print medium. Later on more colour can be introduced. Children should be encouraged to examine and to talk about the prints made and to imagine what kind of print a particular object might make. They can experiment with a variety of prints from a number of objects, studying the effects of placing them side by side, rotating them through a variety of angles and laying one print on top of another using a new colour. They can, finally, make more purposeful print compositions-both abstract and representational-by combining prints taken from found objects.

Making printing blocks for relief printing

This can be done simply by choosing, arranging and gluing offcuts of card, cloth or other thin material -- string or netting, for example -- to a card base and taking a print. Gluing smaller shapes on top of larger ones creates a suggestion of depth and multiple layers. The ink can be rolled out smoothly and evenly on a sheet of hard plastic and transferred to the printing surface.

Discussion on the finished print could centre around the positioning and balancing of the shapes and textures, for example, and children soon notice that their compositions turn out reversed. This can be followed by a lesson in which the children draw, cut out and arrange shapes to their own design, adding texture and line (for example string) as they see fit. Abstract as well as theme-based compositions may be encouraged. Small-scale blocks made in the same way can be used for stampprinting, for example to create a repeat pattern as a design for wrapping paper or for fabric. Fabric-printing ink can be used if printing on fabric.

A relief block can also be made by cutting away areas, as in the traditional potato print. In this the scale is small and hard to manage for very young children. The teacher should avoid providing stereotyped symbols such as stars, moons, triangles or shamrocks and encourage children instead to experiment with an open-ended abstract type of cut, which can be easier to achieve and can be made to combine with itself in more interesting ways.

Clay is a very useful material to print from, since it can take an impression and be cut into very easily. The children can create designs and compositions by pressing objects into a slab of clay about 12 cm by 16 cm, rolling printing ink over it and taking a print. The children can also draw into the clay with the back of a paint brush and cut away, leaving their drawn shapes standing, and these become the positive image. Clay shapes can also be cut out and attached to a clay base for printing. A rolling-pin is used very gently to smooth the surface before inking up. The clay should be of a firmer consistency than is normally used by the children for pottery or sculpture. A sheet of paper is placed on top of the inked surface and very gently rubbed over with the soft part of the palm of the hand. Children should be alerted to the danger of squashing their work.

Besides printing onto clean sheets of paper, old print-making experiments or rubbings can be used to print on for a variety of interesting effects using a different colour. Areas of the original can be masked by temporarily placing strips of paper or shapes of paper cut to the child's design over it during the second printing.

Monoprints

A monoprint is a once-off print. There are many ways of producing monoprints:

• by rolling out a thin film of printing ink on a piece of stiff plastic sheeting or similar. The ink is then drawn into with improvised tools for a variety of effects, a sheet of paper is placed on top and a print taken
• a more detailed drawing can be turned into a monoprint in a similar way. A vanishingly thin layer of printing ink is rolled out and a sheet of paper is placed on top. The child's drawing is then positioned on top of this and traced over, or the drawing is placed directly on the ink and traced over so that it prints out on the other side, or a clean sheet is placed on the ink and drawn on directly for an immediate print on the underside
• areas of an inked surface can be masked out with cut paper silhouettes, shapes or stencils before placing a sheet of paper down on it and taking a print. This can be combined with other forms of printing.

Care should be taken not to touch the paper with the hands when tracing the image. Resting the drawing hand on a 'bridge' made from a ruler resting on two blocks of wood would help. The paper should be peeled off carefully.

EXEMPLAR 17 - Making a monoprint (fifth and sixth classes)

Stencilling

A stencil is a sheet of moveable adhesive paper into which a design has been cut. It is placed on a sheet of paper and painted over, and because it adheres to the page it stops the paint from leaking out beyond the cut shape. It is a simple but interesting way for children to experiment with shape and colour and to discover ways of combining them in a single design or in a repeat pattern. Paint can be dabbed on, sponged on, sprayed on or stippled with a stencil brush or old toothbrush, and it could be diluted to achieve a translucent rather than an opaque effect. An ordinary paper stencil can also be used and sprayed with colour. A small range of colours and tones can be used by more experienced children, working from the lightest to the darkest, and the overlapping diluted colours give interesting colour mixtures. If possible, allow the paint to dry before lifting the stencil, to avoid smudging. Stencils can be lined up or overlapped to create a repeat pattern. Big, bold letters and numbers designed for posters about school events the children are interested in can also be made by stencilling. Some preparatory work could be done on inventive lettering, but legibility should be a priority.

Silk-screen printing

Stencilling is a good introduction to silk-screen printing.

• A stencil is placed on a page that is positioned under the screen.
• A strip of ink is laid across the top of the screen and spread with a firm, steady pull of a squeegee.
• The image is formed by the combination of the inked area and the area that had been protected from the ink.
• A viewfinder could be used to isolate a section of a drawing or sketch and this should be re-interpreted as flat shapes and used as the basis for a design.
• Tempera paint can be used in silkscreen printing.

The screen consists of a frame over which a piece of organdie is stretched and tacked. A squeegee is similar to a rubber-bladed window-cleaner. A strip of hardboard, approximately 6 cm deep and the width of the screen, can be used in its place, the 'blade' side protected with waterproof adhesive tape.

Wax-resist

The popular wax-resist technique on paper would help to give children an understanding of the technique of lithography and also of batik. Children should be encouraged to think about the image or design they wish to create with wax crayon (white) or candle, which will be revealed when they brush a thin wash of paint over it.

Wax-crayon transfer

Children can use this process to transfer a design onto paper or fabric. They should be encouraged to cover the paper thickly with blocks or bands of bright colours so that when another sheet is placed on top and drawn into, a brightly coloured drawing prints out on the underside. A design can also be transferred onto fabric using wax crayon containing fabric dye. Children should be reminded that because the drawn design is placed face down on the fabric, it prints out in reverse.

Photograms

A photogram is an image produced in a darkroom (for example a closet or cubbyhole) or by photocopier when objects are placed on light-sensitive (photographic) paper and exposed to light for a short period. A variety of natural and manufactured objects with interesting shapes, patterns and textures (for example leaves, grasses, paper clips, matchsticks, screws, nuts, ribbon, torn paper shapes, cut shapes and the children's stencils) can be used. Children should be encouraged to think about the effects they can achieve, and special consideration should be given to areas that will print out as light or dark.