2nd Grade Printmaking Unit: Symmetrical City Scapes

For the second project in our printmaking unit, students created these symmetrical city scapes using the intaglio process.  On the first day, we reviewed the warm and cool colors.  We folded our paper in half and drew a border around the edge (sans Phyl at There's a Dragon in My Art Room!).  The top half was painted with warm colors to represent the sunset and the bottom half was painted with cool colors to represent the water.  The great thing I found that I like about having the kids add the border is that it makes their artwork easier to crop on Artsonia!  Some students didn't do that great of a job drawing an even border all the way around, but that's okay, it still made it a little easier to get a nicer crop done.

On the second day, I introduced students to the intaglio process.  I showed them how to lightly draw into a piece of Styrofoam (which were pieces of to-go boxes I bought from a local restaurant) to create the city.  I made sure to show students how their buildings needed to be touching.  After I gave students the go-ahead, they cut out their city and then made their print.

I had my students use black block printing ink for this.  They squirted the ink onto a bench hook and then used a brayer to roll it out and onto their Styrofoam.  Now, here's where I changed this project up a bit from what I found on Pinterest.  The pin I found brought me to the Laugh, Paint, Create blog where this project was done as well.  The teacher there had the students make two prints from their city, one for the city and one for the reflection.  My OCD hit me at this point because I didn't like how the reflection isn't actually a reflection on their projects!

So, I had the students place their inked plate onto the water and press down.  Before they pulled it up, I had them put glue on the back of the plate.  Then, they were allowed to pull the plate up and glue it onto the warm colored side.