November 2, 2010

This was the first class back for me in two weeks (as I missed the 19th, and we didn't have class the 26th). Mary was substituting, and she began our printmaking/monster unit. Although I took many years of printmaking before college, the process of teaching printmaking is completely different and challenging, and one that requires precision planning. I have only taught printmaking to 7 year-olds, and watching both Mary and Aileen's methods of preparing of the stations for printmaking is very VERY helpful. Especially because the process could go from smooth to chaotic in a heartbeat without proper flow in a class with many students.

This class was very relaxed and used one of my favorite printmaking techniques, the collagraph. I love this technique because of the relief quality in the prints, and the ease and accessibility to the materials.

I ALSO LOVE THE THEME OF MONSTERS, boy is this right up my Ali! (alley) Having the books that Mary brought was great for inspiration, because all great imaginary things really come from a conglomeration of known things...and so to inspire creative thought for monsters and creatures, looking at real drawing and photos, inspired quick and creative solutions, so that time could be spent on the printing process. I didn't end up with a successful print, but that inspired me to keep at it during my own time, to be prepared for glitches in the classroom.
 
There is also something to be said about the collaborative prints that we did(seen here). I think this could be a great exercise in two things for students. 1) Collaboration 2) Impermanence. The process of creating a plate and then cutting it up to see how it might work in other ways, is very liberating and takes away the preciousness of work that a student (me) might be frustrated with.

What is so funny about the creature conglomeration was that for my sketchbook a few weeks back, before I started my graphic novel, I was playing around with Photoshop creature collages as characters for my Dystopian story. I ended up with humans in my story (pictures to come), but initially I created this little guy as a model for my character.