Printmaking is probably one of my favorite things, and the students will be starting on this next project once they get back from spring break so I’ve been working on my example.  We are trying to get them to think more conceptually, and to really approach this project as if they are artists (up until this point they rush through projects just to get them done, and have trouble making simple decisions regarding how to proceed with their projects.)

They are going to have a ton of freedom with this project, and the only requirements are that they have to do a series of four prints, they have to use medical illustration imagery, and that imagery should be a metaphor to something that they are going through, something about them, or something going on in their lives.  Other than that, they can go wild.

Here are my brainstorming phases… I decided to go with the image of a knee (the bones, muscles, etc.) because I am currently training to run in a mini-marathon and am having some serious knee problems as a result.

It’s less than a month away… oh geez.

This is the printout of the knee I decided to use, as well as a simplified image of me “running” (haha) and the block I used to carve into.

I printed out a bunch of things from the mini website so I could experiment with printing my image on top (a map of the course, merchandise, an image of all of the people lined up at the race.)

I decided that I wanted to use the knee for sure, so I transfered the image to my block and…

started carving!  This part is going to be especially fun with the kids (please please please no injuries.)

Then I went CRAZY and printed about a million times.  I used different colors, printed on different papers, printed on top of prints, did multiple color prints… I was on a roll.  This was probably my favorite part.

And after this came the hard part.  I had to narrow down which prints I wanted to use and figure out how I was going to put them together.  DECISIONS oh my.

To be continued…