Preparing a Stencil for Silkscreen Printing Year 9

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• The class had begun a printmaking project based on natural forms like flowers, plants and fruit. As a final piece they were developing a 3-colour silkscreen print from digital photographs they had taken themselves, inspired by the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe and the silkscreen prints of Andy Warhol. Previously the class had taken and downloaded their images and spent one lesson in an ICT suite manipulating and printing them out to use as paper stencils for the prints. The aim of this lesson was to recap on the digital process while it was fresh in pupils’ minds before the teacher demonstrated the next stage, which would be to cut out their first paper stencil.
• The teacher had prepared two pages in the whiteboard software with screenshots of the digital process and written descriptions of the steps taken. Both pictures and text were out of sequence.

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• Pupils re-ordered the illustrations correctly by dragging and dropping. Individual pupils took turns at the board, but were guided by the class.
• Next, they aligned text labels with the correct illustration.
• This process was repeated with the second prepared page.

• The lesson continued with the teacher demonstrating how to cut out paper stencils for the key print from one of the previous lesson’s computer printouts. The stencils for the other two colours would be prepared in a later lesson. The pupils then followed suit.
• Throughout this main task a third page was displayed on the interactive whiteboard giving pupils useful prompts.

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• The pages can be prepared in advance and used again in the future.
• The matching activities are an effective and visually interesting way to reinforce recently learned techniques before moving on to the next stage in a process.
• The pages can be printed out for reference and/or used for homework as additional reinforcement.
• The prompts for the practical activity focus attention on the steps and act as an aide-mémoire of the teacher demonstration.
• The same resources can be employed for different purposes by using different tools e.g. the reveal technique for recapping. 

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2001/whatisaprint/flash.html
This interactive Flash site from the Museum of Modern Art illustrates and shows the different processes involved in Woodcut, Etching, Lithography and Screenprint. Cut your stencil, fix it to the silkscreen and drag the squeegee to make a print – all electronically.

http://www.warhol.org
Browse the collections of The Andy Warhol Museum, download a PDF file on his techniques and visit their Online Factory for an Interactive Flash activity to make a Warhol-style silkscreen print of your own, which you can email to friends.

http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/indexflash.php
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico has a permanent collection of the painter’s work.

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/O/okeefe.html
Biographical information about O’Keeffe and about 30 images from Mark Harden’s Artchive.

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/okeeffe_georgia.html
Artcylopedia has a comprehensive list of links to O’Keeffe’s work.

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© RKM 2002 - 2007

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