Textured Printmaking with Paint using Household Objects

Textured Printmaking with Paint using 

Household Objects

Lesson Summary (This was the lesson I taught with my partner)

The objective of this lesson was to use household items to create a piece of art work using the objects' textures. The motivation to this lesson involved 8 different household objects in brown paper bags (tinsel, carpet, pine cones, corn, bubble wrap, sandpaper, paintbrushes, and sponges). The students had notecards numbered 1 to 8. As they walked from bag to bag they reached their hands into the bags and without looking they had to guess what the item was. They wrote their guesses on the note cards and they were discussed after everyone had looked in every bag. The students were then given a little bit of background on two printmaking artists, Mary Cassatt and Henri Matisse. The lesson then moved into a vocabulary review on primary, secondary, and intermediate colors and the introduction of new vocabulary of texture, actual texture, and implied texture. As the teacher I went through step-by-step what the students needed to do. I then gave them the 4 options they could choose from for a final project. They could either create a painting using shapes (like the heart one above), a painting using their name (like the Miss Kringen one above), a painting using a repeated patterned (like the diagonal lined one above), or an abstract painting of their own originality as long as it follows the requirements. The students requirements were to use a minimum of 3 different textures, at least four colors (2 primary, 1 secondary, and 1 intermediate), and to make use of the whole paper while maintaining balance. The secondary and intermediate colors the students used had to be mixed from the 3 primary colors they were given. When the students finished they had to answer the following questions on the back of their rubrics: Is there anything you would do differently? What types of elements or principles did you include in your project? What secondary color did you choose and why? What intermediate color did you choose and why?

Extension Activity

This lesson could be carried over into a social studies classroom. Students could learn the history of the printing press and why its development and creation is so important to life. They could state how things would be different if it had not been invented. The teacher could do an activity with the students to represent what they first printing press was like. The students could use this activity to create small books about themselves. In this activity you would use more of a printmaking technique than was taught in the art lesson. You would also use actual ink in place of the paint. This would allow the students to have a hands on approach to their social studies curriculum.