Thursday, January 20th: Adrienne Begins Art Curriculum with Styrofoam Printmaking

You can find art materials anywhere:the food dye at the grocery store

or the leaves in the park  can be used to create a masterpiece.  One

of the easiest and cheapest printmaking techniques involves using the

Styrofoam meat and vegetable trays. Today we used Styrofoam to learn

the printmaking techniques of debossing and engraving. Engraving is

one of the oldest printmaking techniques in art history it is the

simple process of incising a design on to a flat surface, by cutting

grooves into it. Debossing involves pushing a three dimensional image

into the surface of the Styrofoam to leave an outline of the object.

For this project everybody selected photographs from last semester and

traced photographs on the Styrofoam. Lanae, Levon and Michelle tried

there hand at drawing directly onto the Styrofoam. Aaron experimented

with debossing by pressing some found materials into the surface of

the Styrofoam plate.

Try this project at home! All it requires is a flat piece of

Styrofoam, a pencil, a small amount of paint and a piece of paper:

Step One: Using a tool such as a blunt pencil, carve or engrave lines, dots and larger flat areas into the styrofoam. 

Remember! All lettersand numbers will be printed in reverse.

Step Two: Paint the Surface of the Styrofoam with a brayer.

Step Three: Press a piece of paper onto the surface of the Styrofoam. Hold the paper to the Styrofoam for about 20 seconds.

Step Four: Pull the paper off the styrofoam.