Calavera Prints inspired by el Dia de los Muertos

El Dia de los Muertos is a holiday that focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. It is particularly celebrated in Mexico, where it attains the quality of a National Holiday. The celebration takes place on November 1st and 2nd, in connection with the Catholic holidays of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. Traditions connected with the holiday include building private alters called ofrendas, honoring the deceased using sugar skulls, marigolds, and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed. Families visit and clean the gravesites, elaborately decorate them and often spend the night there, hoping the spirts of the departed will join them as they recall fond memories about those they have lost. Fifth graders were lucky to have Senora Menefee come to our art class to teach us about the holiday and the traditions associated with it. Here is a photo during her presentation:

One thing Senora Menefee taught us about was Calaveras (Spanish for "skulls"), which are prominent symbols of el Dia de los Muertos and are often depicted as animated skeleton characters as a reminder that departed loved ones are never really absent- they are near and dear to one's heart. Fifth grade artists designed calaveras of their own in this project. Looking at library books, pictures of calaveras from the Internet, and even viewing the life-size skeleton I borrowed from the Science department, students created skull designs that were stylized and simplified, which they then transferred to a rubber-like printing plate.Using a special carving tool called a gouge, students focused on balancing the positive and negative space in their piece. Finished plates were printed with colorful inks and papers to create a series of prints for display. Here are a few shots of the process:

 And here are the final pieces:

MAEA Conference

Last Friday I attended the Maryland Art Education Association's (MAEA) annual Fall conference in Silver Spring where about 350 art educators from across the state gathered to share ideas and network with one another. I was also excited to be chosen to present at this year's conference! I led a session titled "Go Green! Fusing Recycled Plastic Bags to Create large Scale Mandalas" in which I shared the collaborative Earth Week project I did in the spring. I demonstrated the technique for fusing bags, and I am sure you can imagine that the teachers in my session were throwing around some other cool ideas for things you could make with fused bags. Here is a photo that an attendee of my session took as I presented and then emailed to me :)

I attended a hands on workshop titled "Botanical Monoprints" and learned how to create cool one-of-a-kind prints using Shrinky Dink film and watermedia. It is always fun to have an excuse to experiment with art materials and make some art of my own. Here are two pics from that session... in the first, one of the other participants shares her work and tells us how she created it, and the other is a series of leaf monoprints by another teacher.

Another exciting thing was that I had piece of Calvert student artwork on display in the 2012 Annual Showcase of Outstanding Maryland Student Artwork, which was exhibited at the conference. I chose a sixth grader's “Warm and Cool Self Portrait with Tessellation” to be featured and it stood out among the other fantastic artwork from all across Maryland!  

Layered Leaf Printing

In this project, students combined and layered painting and printing techniques using fall leaves as the subject. The focus of the project was creating a well balanced composition using an analogous color scheme (colors that are adjacent to one another on the color wheel). Students used the following techniques in order to create their artworks:

Step One: Rubbing: A throwback to childhood crayon fun, students placed a leaf under their paper and used crayon to firmly rub over the leaf, causing the veins and details of the leaves to appear. Students repeated the procedure to fill their page with overlapping leaves of different sizes, shapes and colors.

Leaf-Mask Stenciling: Leaves were placed on the previously rubbed paper smooth side down. Students wet the paper about an inch away from the leaf with clean water and then loaded their brush with watercolor paint. The paint was brushed out from the center of the leaf onto the dampened areas, creating a softened edge effect. The wax from the crayon rubbing resisted the wet paint, allowing the rubbing to show through. When the leaf was removed, a negative space was left over in the shape of
the leaf. Here is a work with the first two steps completed:

Stamping: For the last printed layer, students used brayers (rollers) to apply block printing ink to the veiny sides of the leaves before pressing the printed surface on the paper. These stamped leaves created a positive print that complimented the negative space left by the mask stenciling in the second step. We talked a lot about good composition and balancing leaf size, placement and color across the page (and off the page too!). Here are the finished works from both sections of my 7th graders: