1st Grade City Prints

Day 1: Printmaking

1st grade artists created a city with black paint and a piece of cardboard. We talked about how printmaking is different than painting. When we paint, we go back and forth, back and forth. I use Cassie Stephens' analogy that a paintbrush is like a ballerina: it always dances on its tiptoes and never scoots around on its bottom. When we print, we press and lift, press and lift. I displayed some photographs of cityscapes to inspire them. They used diagonal, vertical, horizontal, and curved lines to create their buildings, windows, doors, antenna, etc. 

Day 2: Color

With our city prints, we already had a few elements of art: line, shape, space (students overlapped the buildings and created two layers of buildings), and texture (in the corrugated cardboard). Today we focused on the element color. Students used pattern and texture plates to color their buildings. They could label the buildings if desired.

Day 3: Finish coloring + Sky Potion

Students finished coloring their city and used sky potion to paint the sky. I also set out some boxes of scrap painted paper if they wanted to cut and glue anything onto their city.  I have found that the younger grades love having multiple mediums to choose from. Not only are they much more focused on their work, but they also are more creative with the options that are provided.  The first grade artists are very proud of their work! 

We learned about the ROYGBIV order earlier this year; I'm always happy to see them apply concepts learned in a previous project in a new one!