Fourth Grade Art Lesson 20

Printmaking, Part 3 Drawing in Details on Our Foiled Plates

Objective:

The student will complete the foiled plate from the previous lesson by filling it in with designs to create texture and inking over it to give it an antiqued look.

Materials:

foil covered plate from the last lesson, a blunt pencil or tool, india ink and lots of paper towels

Procedure:

Get your foiled plate and what you want to do is fill in both the background and raised areas with textured design. Remember that texture is not hard to do, it just takes a lot of time. So be patient and chose some simple design, an “x” for example, and begin piling them up in areas that relate. Change your design on the raised areas and you may need a variety of designs in your background. Once you have filled your entire plate with texture, we will ink the surface to give it an “antiqued” look. Do this by simply pouring a small amount of ink directly onto the surface. Take several paper towels, fold them to build up layers, and begin rubbing the ink around. You want to press the ink into the recessed areas which will remain black. Polish the ink off of the raised areas to get the foil to shine. You may need to repeat the steps to get a great finished look. Again, be patient and work with it until it has good contrast between shiny foil surface and blackened ink.

Conclusion:

When your work is complete you will be able to see how well you did creating the texture work on your foil plate surface. In order to have strong contrast you must have deep recessed textured areas in which the black ink will remain. If you find you have to much foil showing and not enough contrast, you need to go back into the surface to work in more textured areas. Mount your work on a piece of black poster board and display it with one of your best prints.

Artwork and Examples used in this lesson

Teacher Example

Student Artwork

Student Artwork