Students will use fruits and vegetables to create prints.
By Andrea Mulder-Slater
This is a terrific, inexpensive way to introduce printmaking to your students. This is a form of printmaking that can be done with all ages — even adults!
What You Need:
- Paint or ink.
- Sponges and an old cookie tray or styrofoam tray. (its a good idea to put the paint on a sponge so that when an object is dipped into the paint, the sponge will only let off a little bit of paint … because a little is all you need.)
- Paintbrushes, water and water containers.
- Paper
- A covered work area.
- Fruits and veggies of all kinds. Some good ones are:
- carrots
- starfruit
- mushrooms
- cauliflower
- broccoli
- tomatoes
- peppers
- apples
What You Do:
The basic idea is to dip fruits and vegetables into paint or printing ink and stamp them onto paper in random or ordered patterns.
Students may instead wish to apply paint or ink directly to the vegetables with a paintbrush.
No knives are needed except for to cut the fruit or vegetable in half (an adult should do this part).
When the printing is complete, students can choose sections of the finished print (using a viewfinder – two L- shaped pieces of paper) and draw the patterns they see.
