Lino Printing

As many of you will now know, we have been learning how to create lino prints in our visual art lessons.

It all started by learning how to draw a simple design. The simple design had to show one of the 3P's of The Treaty of Waitangi (Protection, Participation, Partnership) and also had to have a Connection (our 2016 Inquiry theme) to ourselves.

We discovered that it is much easier to draw from a photo or other image, rather than draw from our imagination.

We practiced and practiced our drawing over and over to see if we could correct or improve on our last effort each time. We learned that this is what artists do too.

Once we had our image ready we enlarged it by drawing it one more time on to a piece of paper. Then we placed it over a piece of lino and traced over our drawing (hard) with a ballpoint pen. This made an indent in the lino so we knew where to cut.

Bailey has drawn a car racing on a track.

Bailey has imprinted his car and track onto this piece of lino.

Next we needed to use very sharp cutters, cutting boards and some patience to cut out the lines on our lino. We had to make sure we kept ourselves safe and cut away from our body parts and fingers. Some of us found this frustrating but we all used our school value of Perseverance to get the job done!

After cutting we got to make things even messier by using ink. We rolled the ink onto our lino pieces then pressed them (with clean rollers) on to coloured paper.
Here's Mr Brown talking us through the process:

Once we saw how our first prints came out we got the chance to wash the lino off and then improve on our work by cutting it some more. Some off us needed to make our cuts deeper, while others of us needed to add some more detail. Once we'd done that we could print again. We repeated this process a few times until we had a progression of 3 prints to display.

Rolling the ink onto the lino.

Rolling the back of the paper on top of the ink lino.

Peeling the paper off to reveal the print.

We've tracked Bailey's progress through this art journey. After all of the drawing, imprinting, cutting, rolling, inking, and improving, here is his finished art work:

Ka pai everyone in Room 4&5. Your art work looks amazing and can be seen in both classroom's as well as in the School office foyer.