Itty Bitty City Prints

 Itty Bitty City Prints 

I may have posted about this project in the past, but I just love they way that they turn out, so I took a few pictures of the process to share with you. Our 4th graders are working on this right now.  

On the first day of class I introduced the project by talking about architecture and interior design, because they go hand in hand.  I showed the students a slideshow of cityscapes from around the world and had them take notice of the sizes, shapes and structures of buildings and details that they saw.  

Next, I gave each student a 6x9 inch piece of drawing paper. We folded it in have like a book and painted with water color using WARM colors on the top to represent a sunset and COOL colors on the bottom to represent a body of water. 

Next, I gave each student a piece of newsprint to practice drawing their cityscapes on.  When they felt they were ready, each student was given a 4x6inch piece of printing foam.  The students drew the cities in the foam with a pencil and then cut away the sky. 

I set up ONE table for 4 kids at a time to print at with mat for printing, ink, scrap paper, a clean brayer and a brayer for inking. The students then rolled ink over their foam city and printed it in the sky. When they were done with the sky, the students printed their city upside down in the water to represent a reflection. (I know they dont line up because it is a mirror image, but it still looks cool!)