Making your own stamps for printmaking

Key Stage 1

Art and design

Printmaking

﻿Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next lesson in our series of printmaking lessons. This lesson is lesson than three of five in total, and today we're going to be making our own stamps. I think that we're getting to be quite professional printmakers now, and now we're making all of the elements of our work, which is getting pretty exciting. For the rest of the lessons in the series we're going to be making different stamps and making different types of prints. So we're going to be exploring lots of new things. In this lesson we're going to be hunting for patterns around us and making drawings of the shapes that we find. We're going to be making our own stamps for printmaking from those patterns. We're going to be exploring repeating patterns using different stamps, and we'll be overlapping colours and shapes in our prints today. For the lesson you'll need paper, glue, and scissors that you've used before. This time, though, you'll also need a marker pen or a felt tip pen, any type of pen really. You'll need your liquid paints again. And also, this time, a little bit different, you'll need to look in the kitchen and ask permission to use something like cleaning sponges or scouring sponges or even the green scourers that you can find in your kitchen. But you will need to ask permission before you take them. Lots and lots of things like that, products like that can be used for this lesson. You can also use scraps of cardboard for printmaking today and making your stamps. So don't worry if you can't find any kitchen sponges. I'll show you how to use all of the equipment. We have some new Star Words today. Can you see what they are? Have a look at the words and see if you can spot the new ones. That's right. The new words today are motif and stamp. Did you spot them? Let's look at all of the words together and talk through what they mean. Printmaking. Well, we know what printmaking means, don't we? And so far we've tried rubbings and monoprinting to make different types of prints. Repeating pattern. A pattern that's repeated again and again. It's the same pattern repeated. Rotation. Rotation meant that the pattern changed direction each time it was printed. Can you remember? A rotated pattern, then, is a pattern that is rotated and turned around each time it's printed. Here are two new words. Motif. Can you say that? Motif. Motif is a shape used in printmaking. So our stamp will be a motif, a shape that we print with again and again. And our stamp is the next Star Word. So the stamp is the actual object that you use to press down to make your print. We're going to start by recapping some of our knowledge of repeating patterns. I went 'round my home and took some photographs of some of the patterns that I found. Here are some of my examples in the pictures. Should we describe them and look at them together? So the first one is a rug, a corner of a rug, but actually it's on another pattern because it has the wood from my hallway in it, the wooden pieces on the floor. The pattern on the rug are kind of squares with curved corners, aren't they? Not really proper squares, but they're small squares inside larger squares. The pattern on the pot is a floral pattern, which means it's made up of flowers and leaves. The blue pattern on the white pot is a repeated pattern, though it's difficult to see as it curves around the surface of the pot. The spots are from a throw on my sofa, and they are a repeated circle pattern, aren't they? It's a simple pattern, but I love spots and stripes. The last picture is another throw on my sofa, which is a crocheted pattern. So you can see it's lots of zigzags that are repeated on each line of the crochet. I think my favourite pattern has to be the spots. I love spots. Lots of artists and craftspeople and makers use pattern all of the time in their products. And then we have pattern all around us in our homes. We just not might notice it's there very often. Can you see what these patterns are of? Can you guess? Some of them are easier than others. Have a good look. The first image is easiest, isn't it? There is a kind of a piece of fabric hanging and some cushions, and they have patterns printed onto them. The middle picture shows some patterns, which are on some tiles. And again, those patterns have been printed on, probably with a machine for those, I think, because they're very perfect, aren't they? The fabric in the first picture might well have been printed by hand, but I think the second picture was definitely made by a machine. Can you see where the pattern on the third object is from? Can you see what it is? That's right, it's an umbrella. So a repeated pattern has been made by joining the sections of striped fabric together to form the umbrella. I made some drawings of my favourite patterns around my home. Have a little look at them with me. My favourites were the stripes and the kind of flowers that I found on a bedspread in my house. I think I'll use the stripes. I think I got the stripes from some flooring in my home or maybe a radiator from the first lesson, but the stripes, I think I'm going to use as stems for my flowers. So I'm going to create a repeating pattern during this lesson, myself. And I'm going to use those two motifs, the long strips from the stripes and the flower heads shapes. You don't need any colour in your drawings at the moment. You're simply looking for patterns that you want to use and getting some ideas. You don't have to make lots of drawings. Just get some ideas down at this stage. So in a second, I'm going to ask you to pause the video and go and have a look for some patterns around your home. Draw some of the patterns if you want to in your sketchbook so that you can get some ideas for later on. You'll know what shapes to draw onto your stamps for printmaking later if you make some drawings now. You ready? Pause the video and off you go. How did you get on? Did you find lots of patterns? I bet you did. I found so many when I started looking. I never realised how many there were around me, even in just one room of my home. Good, I'm glad you found lots of patterns. Now you need to start looking through your drawings or looking around you at the patterns and thinking about some simple motifs, some simple shapes that you can use for your printmaking today. You're going to choose a motif, a shape, and make it into a stamp with me in a minute. Show me your idea for your first motif, your first chosen shape. Hold it up to the camera for me. Fantastic, I think that will work really well. Just make sure that it's a nice, simple shape, because you're going to need to cut it out of cardboard or your kitchen sponge. Okay, let's get going. We're ready to make some prints now. We just need to gather our equipment. You may need to pause the video in a moment while you gather the bits and pieces. It's handy if you have them ready on the table with you so that you can follow the steps in my pictures and my video. Don't forget, you're going to need scissors, a felt tip or a marker pen, your kitchen sponges or scourers or some cardboard scraps. The thicker the cardboard the better, by the way. So if you have a corrugated cardboard box, that will be the best thing to use. Some liquid paint, any type of squeezy paint will do. And obviously some paper to print onto. Pause the video and go and get your equipment ready. Okay, we're ready for step one, printmakers. You need to draw your chosen motif, your first shape, onto your sponge or onto your cardboard. In the pictures here on this page, I'm showing you how I did it onto a piece of sponge, but it's the same process for both types of material. So, use your pen to draw your simple motif. You can see I've just used a circle. Remember I love those spots. They were my favourite. Draw your motif onto your sponge or card. Then cut out the shape so that you're ready to use it as a stamp for printmaking. You're going to need to apply paint to the stamp now. It's quite a simple process. You may find it easier if you're using a sponge or something that's flexible to press the sponge down into the paint. You could use a scrap of cardboard to put your paint onto like a pallet, couldn't you? You don't need any fancy equipment here. If you're using a cardboard stamp, it might be easier to paint the paint onto the stamp. Use your brush or a foam brush or any type of a brush that you have to do this. Okay, I'm showing you both ways here. I'm using a sponge, but I'm also applying the paint with a brush. See what you find is easiest, though. Then you turn over your stamp and you press it down onto your paper to make your print, just like we did with the found objects in lesson two. Here's Mrs. Tong's top tip for this lesson. You can lift the stamp off the page a little bit just to check that your print has come out fully. Sometimes on the edge you lose a little piece of the motif, or again, sometimes right in the middle, especially if you're using a sponge. Be careful how hard you press. Remember the word pressure from our Star Words from last lesson. Be careful how much pressure you apply to your stamp, because sometimes if you're using a sponge it can make the paint squeeze out over the edges, and then you don't get a nice clean edge to your motif. You'll have to explore this a little bit and experiment and see what works best. You'll get better at it the more prints that you make, too. If you're not happy, you can simply press it down again. If you print lots of separate shapes at the moment, first of all, then you can always cut them out and arrange them into patterns later. Or you can be bold and enjoy printing the same motif overlapping. Can you see here in the picture on the left that I've some colours as well? Remember your colour mixing skills from school? If you overlapped a yellow shape onto a blue shape what colour would you get? Tell me now. That's right, you'd get green. Blue and yellow make green. So when you overlap your shapes, you might find that you're doing some colour mixing, too, which will add to your pattern and make it look really great. You need to explore this lots and lots of times until you get the results that you're happy with. It won't happen straight away. You need to practise. I did. I had to make lots and lots of prints until I got quite good at it. I made repeating patterns using the same stamp with different colours, too. Can you see mine here? Let's have a look at them together. So the first one is overlapping circles. You can see that in the picture that I'm using a cardboard stamp for this. The two in the middle are using two different shaped motif stamps. The first is that flower. Can you remember from my drawings that I chose? That's my finished print. So each time I washed the sponge stamp and then pressed it into a new colour of paint. Okay, I'm going to show you how to make two different types of stamps. So the first one is using a piece of kitchen sponge with the scour on the top that I can hold onto. And the second shape is just literally made from a piece of cutout cardboard look. I've spread out my paint evenly on a scrap piece of cardboard so that I can press my stamps into it. And I'm just going to show you quickly how to make some basic stamps. So we are, first of all I'm going to press my sponge into the paint. I'm going to dab it on evenly so that it gets completely covered. And you can look at your sponge and your shape and check that it's evenly covered. And then I'll press it down very gently onto my piece of paper. I'm going to press it gently, but kind of evenly all over, especially those little corners, because sometimes they don't come out very clearly. Now that's a great print, but if it didn't come out very, very much, maybe you didn't press a corner down or you just pressed it in the middle. So it comes out a little bit, not so bold like that. So you can just press down again on that corner like that. Okay, so that's our first print. Just lay that there. And then I'm going to use the cardboard one now. Now my fingers are already a little bit sticky from the sponge, but that's okay 'cause what we're going to do now is paint the cardboard stamp with the paint. So I'm going to hold it on the sides like this while I paint it. I'm going to put the paint on nice and thickly. And then press down my print, trying to be careful not to get finger marks on my paper. It might be worth having a wet wipe or a little cloth with you so that your hands don't make your paper dirty. So I love the lines that come out from the cardboard. It's never going to be a perfect filled in circle with this cardboard, because it has ridges on it. Can you see? But I really like that effect. I'll show you that you can make more than one print each time as well. I find these ones much easier to press down, the cardboard stamps, because you can press them down with your flat hand. And I quite like it when it's a bit lighter. See what you think. Have an explore and see what you think is best for your design. How did you get on printmakers? Oh, that's great. You made lots of prints. Can you show me your favourite print that you've made today? Can you hold it up to the camera? Ah, they look fantastic. I love the colours that you've chosen, too. Can you guess which of the stamps in the right-hand picture I used to make the design on the left, the flowers, the line of flowers? You can see the shapes that I've cut out to make stamps in the foam on the right-hand picture. Which of those did I use? Have a good look. You ready for the answers? Those are the three that I used. They've got circles 'round them now. So I made a flower top in the pink. I used a small edge piece, one of the pieces of kitchen foam, for the stems, and I cut a leaf shape stamp for the leaves. I hope you like my design. It's a good repeated pattern, isn't it? Okay, for task two today, I've got quite a challenge for you, but I think you're ready now, printmakers, because you've made lots of stamps and you've made lots of prints with using those stamps. You understand how to simplify a motif in order to make a stamp. And now we're going to use your motif and cut it again, if you want to take part in this challenge to make your design a little bit more detailed. Here's what we're going to do. You're going to take one of your stamps. In the picture can you see that I've used a leaf-shaped stamp. Okay, so you're going to take your chosen stamp and draw onto it again. If you look carefully, you'll see that I've drawn a little bit like the veins on the leaf. Then you're going to cut out the pieces that you don't need. Now, in order to do this challenge you will have had to have printed, for example, lots and lots of leaves. Now we're going to print on top of them. This is what real artists do when they make things like lino prints. They call them reduction prints because they take a piece away. They reduce it by a little bit each time. So can you see you're being professional printmakers today? Okay, so in the second picture, just to be clear, you can see that I'm cutting away the new shape, cutting the sponge away to form the new shape. Now I've got a new motif on a new stamp, haven't I? Now, what we need to do is press the, put the paint onto the stamp and press it down onto your first print. You can do this as many times as you like, and you can change it, too. Pull it up a little piece each time, just to check that it's printed and you can adapt it. You can turn it around and print so that it's in line with your original print or it might be a little bit off-center. You can play around with the shapes and patterns that you can make. It's all up to you, the decisions you make as you go along. That's what real artists do, too. Can you see in the second picture that I've lifted my stamp a little bit, just to check that it's all printed properly. The good thing about this type of challenge is that you can see where you're printing, because you're printing on top of your original print. Pause the video for a moment and try the challenge. Try changing your stamp to make a layered print. Off you go printmakers. You're ready for the challenge now. How did you get on? I bet you did really well. But it wasn't easy, was it? It takes a bit of practise. But that's the thing, the more printmaking that you do, the better you'll get. Well done, printmakers. That was an excellent set of prints. Can you complete this sentence to review one of our Star Words today? A motif is the way that you press down on the stamp. Or a motif is a shape used in a pattern. What's your answer, printmakers? Well done. A motif is a shape used in a pattern. Today I'd like you to look through all the prints that you've made. You've probably made quite a lot today. So have a look through them all, choose the motif that you like the best, choose maybe a repeated pattern that you like the best, and cut them out and add them to your sketchbook or onto a new piece of paper to keep your work all together. Think about why you're making the choices that you are. Is it because of the colours? Is it because the print has come out really clearly? That might be why it's your favourite. I've shown some of my favourites that I've chosen for my sketchbook here on the screen. My flower repeated pattern is definitely my favourite of the day, but can you see at the top where I've played around with the simple shapes, the circle motif and the strike motif that I talked about at the beginning of the lesson? That's right. So I've arranged them in lots and lots of different patterns. And these two are my favourite, because they came out the clearest. I quite like the colours that I've chosen, but there are endless possibilities of patterns and colours that I could change and move around. That's why sometimes it's quite useful to cut out some of your prints that you've made and make them into new patterns by sticking them down onto a new piece of paper or into your sketchbook. Have a play around with that. Professional artists do that all the time. They'll make lots and lots and lots of versions before they're happy with the final version. In my sketchbook today I've got six pictures here that I wanted to share with you. You can choose as many or as few as you like. Choose your favourites. Why don't you tell your parent or carer why you've chosen them? Maybe you could share them with them, like a mini exhibition, today. If you would like to share your work with Oak National, the details are on this next screen, but please do remember to ask your parent or carer to upload those for you. Well done printmakers. What a fantastic lesson. You had a lot of challenge today, and you met it really successfully. You're getting really good now at being able to explain the choices that you're making. And today we learned two new Star Words as well. We learned stamp, which we have used before in our discussions, but we haven't learned it as a word on its own. And we learned motif, which, can you remember? It meant the shape that we use to make a stamp in printmaking or in a pattern. Well done, printmakers. Thank you ever so much for working so hard today. I really hope you'll join me for the next lesson in the printmaking series, where we're going to make a special type of stamp called a collagraph. A collagraph is a bit like a 3D collage. I'll tell you more about it in the next lesson. Well done printmakers. Bye-bye.

Making your own stamps for printmaking

Making your own stamps for printmaking

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UnitArt and design / Printmaking

Art and design