• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Wonderbar

Creative art instructions for kids!

  • Welcome
  • Classes
    • Art Babies & Toddler Play Group
    • Family Art Experience
  • Events & Parties
  • Calendar
  • Art Projects
    • Painting
    • Drawing
    • Printmaking
    • Mixed Media
  • About
  • Contact
  • Nav Social Menu

    • Facebook
    • Instagram

Mountain Styrofoam Prints

August 1, 2018 by Claudia Brauer

Nature is one of the most underutilized treasures in life. It has the power to unburden hearts and reconnect to that inner place of peace. – Janice Anderson

Printmaking is always fun with any age group. As older children grow increasingly critical of their drawing abilities they sometimes get frustrated and often end up reluctant to engage in art activities. Foolproof and playful art activities can be a great way to help older children develop confidence and grow more accurate drawings skills. In this mountain printmaking project they can attain the realistic look they so much desire without major frustration or disappointment! You can make wall prints and calendars from your prints or offer this printmaking project as part of an artful outdoor exploration week, with or without tracing. Make sure to check out our other playful printmaking projects here and here.

Materials:

  • Mountain pictures (from magazines, calendars, printed photos etc.)
  • Tracing paper
  • Pencils
  • Watercolor paper
  • Liquid Watercolors
  • Paintbrushes
  • Scissors
  • Tempera paint (for a clearer image use real printing ink)
  • Brayer (or your rolling pin, a foam brush or thick paint brush)
  • Tray or plate for rolling out the paint
  • Painter’s tape
  • Scratch Foam (or any other styrofoam e.g. white foam take out containers or foam plates from the grocery store)

Step 1: Choose and trace a picture

Tape a piece of transparency paper on top of your chosen picture and start tracing the lines. Avoid drawing very small details that might disappear when printing. Feel free to look under the paper in case you can’t see all the details or invent your own lines to the existing one’s. The lines you are drawing will show up white when printing, everything else will be black.

Step 2: Watercolor your background

To frame your art tape a border around your paper. Use a paintbrush to evenly wet your paper with water.

Give your paper a watercolor wash and experiment with beautiful wet on wet techniques. Introduce the concept of a gradient wash and how to add small amounts of color so the pigments feather and mix. In case you’re unfamiliar with watercolors here’s some good essential watercolor techniques. To make liquid watercolors, mix some water with just a few drops of liquid watercolors until you like the hue and intensity of the color and add a thick paintbrush to each glass. Tell the children to use one color at a time and ask them to put the paintbrush back in it’s glass which keeps the colors clean and vibrant (we actually used our new sets of Prima watercolors but liquid watercolors create a more even design and are less complicated to use). Allow for the papers to dry while you transfer your design.

Step 3: Transfer your design

Tape your drawing onto either side of the Scratch Foam and retrace your drawing using a dull pencil, pressing down rather hard. The lines you are carving will show up white when printing, everything else will remain raised and will show up black. When done, remove the tape and tracing paper.

Remove the drawing and retrace it once more directly on the Scratch Foam, creating deep grooves. Point out where children have to trace the lines once more to make them deeper so they will show up in their prints.

Step 4: Print your design

Squeeze a small amount of paint onto a tray or plate and roll it back and forth using your brayer. Once your brayer is evenly coated with paint, roll it over the Scratch Foam. When working with a large group of children I usually show the printmaking process first and set out papers and a few trays of paint with brayers for printing.

Position your Scratch Foam over a piece of paper and press down firmly to print. Gently rub over the foam with your fingers (or another, clean brayer) to transfer your design onto the paper. You can also position your paper over the foam, press down and rub over it to print. Pull up the paper to reveal your print.

Before printing on your watercolor papers wash the Scratch Foam, dab it dry with a kitchen paper towel and cut off the top section of sky for the watercolors to show.

Print and repeat as often as you like (or until you run out of colored paper).

When dry, peel the tape to reveal uniquer and beautiful prints:

Enjoy!

♥ Claudia.

Share
Pin
0 Shares

You might also like

  • Styrofoam Print Valentines

    For many children printmaking is one of the most mysterious and magical art techniques. It's results are often surprising as…

  • Funky Easter Bunnies

    Meet our funky Easter bunnies and head over to teachstarter to get your own fabulous and free template! This project…

  • Tissue Paper Easter Baskets

    Have you ever made Easter baskets? We loved making these fun and simple tissue paper bowls that were perfect for…

  • Tracing Drawings

    Tracing can be fun and beneficial for all age groups. While younger children might engage in imaginative play as they…

Filed Under: Printmaking Tagged With: Ages 5+, Kindergarten Art, Liquid Watercolors, Printing, Styrofoam, Tracing, Transparency paper

Previous Post: « Tape Resist Flowers
Next Post: Sun Prints »

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Mixed Media Calendars
  • Snowflake Mixed Media Collage
  • Christmas Potato Prints

Categories

  • Drawing
  • Mixed Media
  • Painting
  • Printmaking

Archives

  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018

Copyright and reposting

All content on this blog is copyright and owned by Wonderbar unless stated otherwise. If you want to use an image from one of my posts please link directly back to the specific post with my DIY instructions. Thank you!

Footer

Instagram

  • „What is love and how can we show love 💕?”
.
„Love is… when you give people your favorite dresses.”
.
„Love is… when my mommy plays soccer with me.”
.
„Love is… when you give and share toys and love people.”
.
„Love is… asking for hugs and kisses.”
.
„Love is… giving hugs and kisses and candy.”
  • Valentine’s Day Backpack Charms, Necklaces, Keychains, anyone? Modeling figures with Oven Bake Clay (aka Sculpey) is a fun weekend activity and makes for sweet Valentine’s gifts!

Get your own cards to inspire your Sculpey figures here:
“YODA Best Valentine!”
@designwashrinserepeat
“You are Dinomite!”
@sweetcsdesigns
“Will you bee my Valentine?”
@lilumbrella
“Thank you for being my Friendasaurus!” @aliceandlois
“Llama be your Valentine!”
@artsyfartsymama
Backpack printable:
@make_it_your_own_

Thanks to all mama’s and makers out there for giving away such sweet printable Valentine’s cards ♥️!
  • Squeeze, poke, squish and knead while playfully strengthening those muscles that are later used to hold a pencil and write. Thanks for the Snowman Factory @buggyandbuddy! ⛄️❄️
  • “What children learn does not follow as an automatic result from what is taught, rather, it is in large part due to the children’s own doing, as a consequence of their activities and our resources.” — Loris Malaguzzi, The Hundred Languages of Children.
.
Do we teach according to how children learn? Do we trust children to be their own guides and allow them to choose the experiences they are most interested in? Do we keep our environment responsive and flexible?
.
Making calendars the 3-year old children were mainly interested in cutting with the scissors ✂️ , using the the paper craft punches and layering different shapes while almost all of the 4-5 year old children engaged in symbolic drawing ✍️ inspired by the seasons.
.
More details and full DIY instructions on the blog (link in profile) ♡.
  • Create postcard-sized Mixed Media paintings to make calendars 📆 ! Though the concept of time is still way too abstract for young children to understand, we can invite them to use their imaginations to create pictures and/or use colors that might remind them of spring 🌷, summer ☀️, autumn 🍂 and winter ☃️. Start creating to one season, imagine the weather and what you like doing during that season. See what happens and what experiences the children will choose, e.g. they might just arrange the collage materials or maybe they will draw really detailed scenes inspired by each season etc. Find all the details and full DIY instructions on the blog (link in profile) ♡!
  • All 🙌🏻 on deck during our epic craft party to experiment with layering techniques and Mixed Media... Guess what we’ve been working on ♡!
  • We took our window decorations down and glued the snowflakes ❄️❄️❄️onto mat board which turned out to be a wonderful, open-ended art activity as well as a good introduction to layering with various materials. Find all the details and full DIY instructions on the blog (link in profile) ♡.

About me

  • Facebook
  • Instagram

Hello, I'm Claudia Brauer: arts educator, hobby artist, art therapist and special education therapist, based in Ridgway, Colorado. I’m excited to bring art enrichment to your home and hope to inspire other educators and parents to nurture childhood creativity through the arts.

Read More…

Recent posts

Copyright © 2019 · Foodie Pro & The Genesis Framework