Adventures In Printing #2

Over the last couple of weeks Year 4 have been continuing their William Morris inspired printing adventures by developing their own string prints.

We've been starting each lesson adding to our detailed William Morris duplication pictures his famous Strawberry Thief design - they're coming on a treat!

We quickly recapped what we knew about William Morris and his printing process, comparing it to our previous press printing.

After that we played a roll and draw game to get us thinking about simple wild flower designs and motifs. We used and adapted these in our own design ideas in our sketchbooks.

We used our design ideas to create some string printing blocks.

The following week we finished off our string blocks and began printing, using different greens, for different sections. We had to paint quickly as the string absorbed the paint.Then we turned over our tile, applied some pressure and revealed our print!

After both the tile and print had dried we stuck them into our sketchbooks.

Design to final print - some of us adapted our designs more than others realising that we couldn't get the effect we wanted in string, or that our designs had to be simpler and more spaced out.

Finally we compared our press printing to our string printing. We agreed that string printing where your design 'sticks up' was more in keeping with William Morris but most of us preferred the bolder effect of the press printing, which we felt was generally more effective.