Lockdown 5.0 here in Melbourne at the moment and we’re back to remote learning. My year 9s started a unit on Nature & Printmaking before we went into lockdown and because our lockdown was SO sudden, none of my students were able to grab a few supplies from school to take home. SO… I scoured the internet trying to find some activities that my students could do from home. No paints, no markers, no inks, AND printmaking. It CAN be done, but Printmaking is not the easiest topic to do remotely!
Here’s one activity I came up with today that focuses on using leaves and embossing.
You’ll need:
Black tea bag
Textural leaves (I found lemon tree leaves to work well, as well as gardenia leaves. Any kind of hard leaf with thick veins works well)
Any kind of paper (I used regular printing paper)
Scissors
Lay your paper over the underside of the leaves (the bottom, more textural side of the leaf) and gently dab with a wet tea bag that has been brewing for a few minutes. Try not to wet the paper too much or it will just start to fall apart.
Using your fingers, press the paper down and squish it down all over your leaf. Concentrate on the veins so you can get a good embossed print.
Leave your prints to completely dry and then cut them out. You can use these leaf prints in any way you like but I created a little collage.
If I was going to take this further, (into lockdown!) I would get the students to take photos of their collages and edit these on their mobile devices. I’d get them to play around with hues, saturations, and cropping.
Have fun! I’ll pop up a few of my students’ work when they’ve given it a go. Wish me luck!
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