Monster Prints

This unit of study for 2nd through 5th Grade was centered around two things, monsters and printmaking, and was a week long placed conveniently at the end of the month of October. Printmaking was done with white and white-tinted colors of acrylic paint on black paper. The printing block was a small styrofoam block, and the process utilized was relief, a subtractive engraving process, much the same as wood block printing. 

The first part of the unit was studying the Caprichos intaglio print series created by Francisco Goya.

The classes took notes about Goya and his series of twisted and dark prints. 

Though in all truth, the historical context and subversive meanings of these prints is of some more mature content, the classes still learned about Goya's place in the Enlightenment Era, his opposition to society in Spain, and his views of the clergy. They learned about how Goya used monsters and creatures to represent allegories pertaining to his concerns and critiques of society.

Next, they spent some time brainstorming some monster ideas of their own in their sketchbook. Then they were taught how to use a styrofoam block to make a plate or block for printing an edition of prints. Here are some of the results:

After all the 2nd through 5th Graders were done printing an edition of six prints, each, they chose their best one from the edition to be left on display at school. The other five were given to them to trade, keep, and give to family and friends.

The 4th and 5th Graders got to make a larger group piece that you see below, a simple checkered collection of every student's print.

Kindergarten and 1st Grade did a form of printing monsters, too, but skipped the dark lesson on Francisco Goya. In lieu of the art history lesson, they studied symmetry.

The project was simple. Each kid got a manila piece of paper, drizzled a little black paint on it, folded it in half, reopened it, observed the symmetrical picture created by the paint, and took a pen and colored pencils to it to create a monster in the image they saw. Then they did the same thing with white paint and black paper.

A symmetrical face of some sort was encouraged, looking for something that may represent eyes, ears, a mouth, a nose, and so on.