Ask the Experts, Episode Four: Printmaking

Thank you for joining us on Ask the Experts.

I’m your host, Tim Bogatz, and over the course of these episodes I will be talking with some art teaching experts and guiding us through a deep dive into a variety of different media. Each of the questions you hear today have been submitted by a member of our art teaching community.

No matter if you are a veteran teacher looking for new ideas, a brand new teacher looking for some guidance, or an experienced teacher who wants to up their game, I hope that the advice shared here about teaching each medium can help you.

As part of each episode, the show notes will include a plethora of resources to help your teaching if you want to learn even more. 

Today’s episode is about printmaking, and my guest will be Candido Crespo. I’m very excited to talk to him, and we have some great questions to answer. Let me bring him on to start the discussion!

Candido Crespo is here now. Candido, welcome. Can you start us out with a little bit of an introduction?

Sure, sure. Well, first, thank you for having me. I am a husband, father, artist, and 17-year art educator. When are we considered veterans? Am I over the hump?

That’s a good question. I feel like once you hit double digits, it’s just got to be automatic.

Yeah, it has to be it, right?

Right.

Yeah, it has to be it. I’m in New York, Long Island, to be specific, and I’m currently teaching kindergarten through seventh grade, which has been an interesting year for me. I am having a lot of fun, though. I’m doing a lot of learning at year 17, which I didn’t anticipate, but I think it’s making me a better art teacher.

Yeah, I love to hear that. That’s incredible. I can’t imagine having both kindergartners and seventh graders as part of your teaching routine. That’s a lot.

Well, I didn’t anticipate it, but I think with this particular job, I think we are sometimes given scenarios which we didn’t anticipate, and I think we do well with it.

I was going to say we’re good at what we do and we can be proud of that, so yeah, we appreciate you representing our teachers and showing people that we can do it all.

Yeah, for sure.

All right, cool. We have a ton of printmaking questions here from whole spectrum, from elementary all the way through high school, and just want to get your perspective on a lot of this stuff. We’re going to start with two different questions that kind of combine into one, I think. First one is Annie from Arkansas and Annie asks, “I want to do printmaking with my students, but I’m really afraid of the mess. What is the best way to set up my room in order for kids to make prints, but also in order for me to keep my sanity? Okay, good. Then right along those lines, Mackenzie in Vermont says, “I would appreciate you sharing your best cleanup tips for linoleum printmaking.” Candido, can you talk a little bit about sort of the mess, how you handle the mess, how you organize things, and how you have students clean up?

All right, so when it comes to printmaking, I’m definitely a station guy. I’d rather have the room divided into stations. That way if ink is going to be an issue, at least it’ll be an issue only in that corner of the classroom

In one specific area. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, so having the room set up in a place where the students can, they are creating their design, they’re drawing, they’re transferring their image, another station where some of the cutting is going on, whether it’s with an X-Acto knife, or a lino cutting tool, and then a station, I’m sorry, an inking station where that is just isolated. I think that’s the most effective way to do that.

Yeah, I think that’s a good way to do that. It’s a good way to keep things separated, like you said, keep the mess localized. I wanted to share one idea. Yvonne Lopez Taylor, she’s an elementary teacher in Texas. She’s done some good presentations for us at the Now conference. I will link to one of those in the show notes for everybody who’s listening. She has this great setup that is basically, she’s got one big table and everything that kids need for inking is right there. They’re working on their printmaking plates or their linoleum, whatever they’re working with at their table. Then they come to the inking table and at that inking table, everything is in its place. Every section, every part of the process has an outline on butcher block paper that she set down there. The ink tray is there, there’s an outline around it, and it says ink tray, and then the ink is outlined and it says ink.

Same thing for where are you going to put the plate, even the brayer is outlined and set on the table so kids know exactly where that goes. She has the kids take their plates over there, ink them at that table, and then go back to their own table to actually create the print. I was a little skeptical of kids carrying inked plates around the classroom, but after seeing it in action, I’m a believer. It worked out pretty well. Anyway, I will share that presentation if anybody’s interested in seeing how that works. I think that’s a good way to organize the mess or keep the mess localized. Then honestly, as long as you’re using water-based inks, I don’t think cleanup is really that difficult. Obviously, kids can make a mess with just about anything, but anything cleans up with soap and water. I don’t think it’s too bad. For Mackenzie and Annie, don’t be too scared. It’s manageable. You can make it work. I would encourage you to just dive in, do some trial and error, and you’ll figure out what works best for you, but you don’t need to be afraid of it.

Oh, I think one more thing to add is, so I’m not great with this, but for the teachers who are responsible and giving students tasks and jobs and they come in and they know what their responsibility is, here is a specific technique where that would come in very clutch like knowing who is going to be responsible for cleaning up, who is gathering materials that will just keep the project rolling and keep the classroom rolling as well.

Yeah, for sure. That’s good advice. See, it’s been a long time since I’ve taught elementary, so I forget about the cleanup helpers and the specific jobs. I have not done that in a while, so appreciate that advice. Okay, next question. This comes from Alice in Kentucky and Alice asks, “I do centers in my classroom. Is it too much to do a printmaking center?” Candido, your opinion on printmaking centers.

I think when I first read this question, I was still thinking station and not centers. I don’t do centers in my classroom. It’s not a term that I deal with frequently, but now that I think about it, if I had to provide any advice for a printmaking center, I would probably do something that involves more of existing stamps, not necessarily a cutting experience. Maybe assembling or, so if it’s cardboard, assembling pieces together, if it’s Legos, doing stamping techniques like that. Something that doesn’t evolve anything too dangerous.

Right, right. No, I for sure think that’s the way to go. I was just going to, I never used centers either, but I did want to share a couple that I’ve seen before that I think have been successful with younger elementary kids. I guess, Alice, to answer your question, it’s definitely not too much to do a center. It’s definitely doable. Two that I’ve seen have been good. Taking old CDs, letting kids paint on those. It’s very similar to stamp technique that you just mentioned, Candido, but just taking the back of a CD, painting on that, and then kids will put the paper on there, transfer the print, and just understand how that works. That’s kind of a cool one. Then with even the youngest kids, even like kindergartners, I don’t know if you’ve seen those foam stickers that are like a fraction of an inch thick, but they actually stick up off the paper and just have kids put a few of those sticker shapes together.

Even it’s just triangles, stars, squares, circles, whatever. Do a composition with that. Roll ink over the top of that and print that. They can be pretty self-sufficient with that. It’s just stickers, rolling ink and printing. Yeah, both of those techniques are super simple, but things that kids can do by themselves. I definitely think that’s doable. Alice, I would encourage you and anybody else who’s thinking about doing centers, I would encourage you to definitely think through the cleanup process. What are the problems kids are going to run into? If they’re doing this by themselves, what do you need to show them as far as cleanup goes? What rules do you need them to follow? Just kind of think through that whole process before you get it started. It’s definitely doable. Yeah, I would encourage you to go for that.

Hey, next question comes from Joe and Oregon and Joe just said, “I can’t afford linoleum blocks with my budget. What are my alternatives?” Candido, you just mentioned a couple of just quick stamp things. Can you talk about those or any other ideas that you have, I guess?

Yeah, so lino blocks are expensive, especially if you have large class sizes, it will become pretty much impossible. I think considering alternatives isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I think it is the right thing to do because it allows you to extend the lesson and you can drag out all the techniques that a student can learn and experience as well. I happen to be in favor of using Lego. I think you could do a lot with them, but not just with the standard blocks, but their latest series of the dots series where you can, they make bracelets out of them, but if you use a Lego template like the plates that come in squares and you use these dot pieces, you can essentially create an entire image on the plate, roll that over with a brayer, put a piece of paper on there, press it down with the baron, and you are experiencing the same thing minus cutting.

I think that’s really cool. You mentioned the foam stickers earlier where you could do the same thing with cardboard, cut cardboard designs and symbols and shapes and glue that onto a larger piece of cardboard. It’ll be raised, you can ink that transfer the image that way as well. I just saw somebody use rubber bands, so actually you can cut them and then hot glue them down onto a surface and they can give you some traction. The same thing with hot glue gun, with hot glue, people make the brush cleaners with them, but once those things are created, if you rolled paint or ink over that, you can transfer those images as well.

Yeah, you got a good texture there. I like that. All right. I’m intrigued by the rubber bands though. I like that idea a lot, so that’s cool. I was just going to say, any kind of styrofoam that you can find works really well. People always say whatever you buy meat on at the grocery store, just wash those off and you can just draw on a pencil with those, which again, the same concept as cutting that and a little bit safer. That’s a great option for elementary. With secondary, I’ve used particle board and just other scrap wood that I found from shop class or gotten donated from hardware stores or whatever, those dull your cutting blades very quickly. I don’t know if I want to recommend that, but it is an alternative that’s out there if you’re looking, I mentioned CDs for younger kids, just painting on them.

I’ve done almost like etching-type things with CDs, with older kids taking a nail or a needle tool from ceramics, anything that’s a little bit sharp and can scratch into a CD, you can scratch an image onto there and print that, so that’s good. Candido, when you said thinking about cardboard there, you can even do a calligraph where you don’t necessarily need to ink it, but you can just create that texture. Then if you have a printing press, which, okay, so I’m going down this road where we don’t have the budget for linoleum blocks, but in this imaginary classroom we do have a printing press. I don’t know, I don’t know if the logic follows, but if you can just create a cool texture with cardboard and some images and just print that texture through a printing press on some quality paper, then calligraphs you create are really cool. Again, now that I say that out loud, I don’t know if it’s a great idea, it’s an alternative that’s out there.

Well, so if a teacher had to decide where they were going to spend the money, and if they invested in something that’s going to exist more long-term, then the press would make sense, right?

Right, yeah.

Because it’s something that you can then take into the future. And then when money does magically appear and it grows on the tree in the front of the school, you can snatch a few of the bucks and buy the lino blocks that you need.

Yeah, there you go. For sure. No, I am always a fan of buying permanent equipment over consumables, so I think that’s a good idea.

Well, I thought about, oh, I was going to say one more sharp tool that for me, I have existing in my room is the old drawing compasses, like the old metal ones.

Oh yeah.

We don’t use those for making circles in my classroom because we have circle tracers, we have plastics compasses, but those are very sharp and they can easily get the job done.

Yeah, put it to use. All right. Next question comes from Kobe in Arizona, and Kobe says, “I’ll have a printmaking class that I’m teaching in the fall that is one semester long. I teach high school. My district is asking me for a scope and sequence for how I’m going to do things, but I’m really overwhelmed. What advice do you have for me thinking about what I should teach and how I should plan the semester?”

Okay, great. I am both jealous and excited about the opportunity of having a printmaking class. I would hope to be in this same situation in the near future, but my first response and being as modern as possible, hello, AI chatbot. I would just easily punch this thing in there, provide all everything that you need to as far as what you can possibly do inside of your classroom into the prompt and just see what is generated. You may very well get an answer that’s substantial and then, or maybe you’ll get something that you can work out a little bit, but let’s be a little bit more traditional.

There are online communities that have the answers to this question already existing, and I think there’s people that are cool enough that’ll just scan in what they have, send you the digital file of what they have going on. Then the last thing I thought was this class was probably taught at some point in this school’s history, and it might actually already exist in the archives, and then it can just be updated in some way. Yeah, there’s ways to get these answers that shouldn’t be too much of a brain buster.

Yeah, I like all of those suggestions. I would concur and just say, do a little bit of research and like you said, just spend a little time with online communities with just different resources that you can find and figure out what’s out there. Then I think the key is just how you’re going to put it together. I would encourage you to just think about how you want to organize that curriculum. Do you have specific lessons that you want to teach? Do you have specific concepts that you want kids to know? What is going to be the priority for you? Then once you figure out your priorities, just start there. Then just use those resources to put it all together. Just prioritize what you think is going to work the best, what you want kids to do or what you want them to know, and then attach resources to that outline. I think it can come together pretty naturally in that way, so I like that.

All right. Next question. I really enjoyed this one. It says, “I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve never been able to figure out how to do a reduction print. Can you explain it in just the simplest terms possible? How do you explain it to your students. Signed, please don’t use my name.” I would say, before I let you answer this, you I would say there’s no shame in not knowing these things. When I started teaching, I did not know how to do a reduction print, and it was something that I had to learn on the job. Anyway, advice for either how to do or how to teach a reduction print.

I’ll put my name on this and say that I don’t really have the guts to do this. A reduction print, I think for me, I like exclusive things. I think that that idea is really cool, but it’s so unforgiving. I don’t know that I can find my way into accepting it as its technique. In simplest terms though, when I think about this, I just want to think about it as working backwards. You’re setting up a work of art where you are just starting with the background moving forward the same way you would work on a coloring image that you want to finalize with the Sharpie right at the end. I do think that the most important thing to think about if you’re going to jump into reduction prints is how many pieces do you intend on getting out of it? Like, well, how big is the addition? You have to know that before you begin. Otherwise, there’s no going backwards.

Yep. Every step is a point of no return, and that’s intimidating. Man, if you really mess something up and like color number four, it’s rough. Yeah, it’s a tough one. I would say, well, here, I’ll just say I wrote down the process as best I could. I’ll try and explain it quickly. Again, I’m almost self-taught with this, so if you have any corrections, feel free to jump in. Again, I don’t know if I should admit this on a show called Ask the Experts, but we’re passing along knowledge here. Here’s what I did with my kids. I always explain we’re working back to front, like you said, starting in the background, working your way forward. Each color is going to be a separate print, but they all have to come from these same blocks. That’s the challenge in doing that. What I have kids do is draw their image first, same size as the linoleum block, go with graphite on the back and then trace over it, which transfer, that graphite transfers onto the linoleum.

You have your image that you’re going to work with. I have them go over with Sharpie, everything that needs to stay and then cut away everything that’s going to be white. The highlights, the background, anything else that can be white, go ahead and cut those away, don’t need them. Then we set up a registration board to line up all the prints. I have them just trace their block onto a piece of cardboard, cut that out, so the block sort of sits inside of it, if that makes sense. Just lays on the table. There’s cardboard flat on the table with a hole in it, the same size as your block. That’s where that goes when you’re going to print. Then I do an L shape with, so you can register or line up your paper in the same place each time.

Each print, you just go the same way, lay the paper on the plate each time, but as long as you just kind of mark where that paper goes each time, then you should be able to line them up. You will ink it with your first color. Go ahead and print. Make as many as you need. Like you said, Candido, figure out how many are going to be in that edition. Are you making four prints? Are you making seven? Are you making a dozen? Whatever it may be. Just go through with all of them ’cause this is your one chance to get that first color down, so make however many you need. Then when you’re done, just label those, keep them in order. You clean your block, go back, carve away what’s going to be that next color, ink it, print it again, and then clean it, carve it, ink it again, and just keep repeating for however many colors you have. That’s tough to do over podcasts, but that’s basically the process. Anything to add to that? Anything that I missed?

No, I mean, I think that’s it. I don’t think it’s as hard as it is restrictive. I just think that that’s the thing to consider where it’s like if you do mess up, it’s kind of like, all right, next project, because it’s going to be really hard to fix that problem.

Yeah, it can be frustrating. Yeah, I guess my advice would be think about do you really want to do this? It’s a challenge. It is a challenge for me to wrap my head around and challenge for kids as well. It is just such an abstract, weird sort of process. Anonymous person that wrote in, what I would say is give this a try yourself. See if it makes sense to you. See if you can get a good result from it. Then as you are going through that process, take notes about this is what’s working, this is what kids might struggle with, and if you get through it, you feel like you’re successful, you feel like you can explain it to your students, maybe go ahead and try it. Otherwise, if you want to leave it out, I think that’s fine too. Yeah, just give it a try, see how it goes.

Okay. Candido, final question. I feel like I’ve been talking too much, but we’ll kind of wrap this up here and I want to hear a little more from you on this one.

Okay.

Question is from Sahil in Michigan and Sahil says, “What are your suggestions for advanced printmaking techniques that might get my students actually excited about something?” Yes, this is what we are all feeling right now. “I have a printing press and a lot of materials in my room, even some budget money I can spend. I was thinking about silkscreen or lithography or etching. What do you think about those ideas, or is there something else I should go for?” This sounds like a dream situation, to be honest. Quality equipment, money to spend. Where do you go in this situation?

This is an ideal situation. I’m not overly concerned on what additional techniques, but if you’re worried about how do you make this thing interesting, I think entrepreneurship is how you make this thing interesting. I think this is an opportunity where you can assist these students to develop a body of work that they can actually sell something where they can take into a local festival, a local fair. Maybe if the Parent Teacher Association has a business forum or something that the students can sell, that they can sell their prints, so they can make linoleum prints and sell those. They can turn them into greeting cards. If there was something else that I would invest in, it would definitely be screen printing setups.

I think then they can do something that’s a step further go into fashion merchandising. They can create totes that they would like to use. They can do multicolor prints that way. Learn about heat trends like the heating elements or the lighting elements that are necessary, how the vacuum technology works and transferring images onto a screen exposure. It’s really, there’s a ton that you can do with silk screening. I think that in my education, that’s probably the most intrigued I became with printmaking is the time that I was learning that. Then knowing that at the end with all of that information, I can actually take it into the real world and produce something that I can sell and age wouldn’t be a problem. The thought of a teenager starting their own clothing line and being able to sell it immediately. Having a turnaround that’s essentially overnight while you wait for the product to dry, I think it doesn’t get any cooler than teaching printmaking and entrepreneurship at the same time.

Yeah, love that advice. That sounds incredible. I did some silk screen with kids a while back and we ended up printing our art club T-shirt, and that was cool. I wish I would’ve had you around back then to tell me like, “Hey, let’s push this a little further. Let’s do some entrepreneurship.” I feel like that really is next level stuff that your kids can be doing. I appreciate that advice for sure.

I’ll just add two things really quickly. I think kids love doing etching. I think they love doing lithography. If you have the chance to get the equipment and materials for those, I think it’s something that they respond to. Not nearly as cool as making T-shirts and selling them, but there are some cool processes and AOEU has some cool resources for each of those techniques. We’ll link to those as well. Sahil or anybody else who’s in that boat that wants to learn a little bit about those, we’ll put those resources together for you too. Candido, thank you so much. Appreciate all the advice, appreciate all the answers, and appreciate you giving us some time.

Yeah, thank you for letting me hang out and talk about printmaking.

Tim:

Thank you to Candido for his expertise and for answering all of our questions.

If you want to continue your learning, I want to highlight a few of the links that you can find in the show notes.

The first will be the NOW video from Yvonne Lopez Taylor that I mentioned in our discussion. That presentation will be linked, as well as 3 other videos from the NOW archives.

We will also link to four additional PRO Packs–I mentioned a couple of these during the episode, but we have packs on lithography, screen printing, monoprinting, and printmaking with simple materials. Each of these PRO Packs has so much important knowledge, ideas for your art room and how to teach those ideas, and some great resources that you can use and some that your students can use. A great place to get started with printmaking no matter what level you teach.

We are also linking to 2 collections from AOEU’s FLEX Curriculum. One is on relief printmaking, and the other is about experimenting with monoprinting. There are some good lessons in there, and These collections also include videos, planning sheets, assessments, other resources for students, artist bios, career cards, and so much more. 

We also have some additional resources that you might find worthwhile, including some magazine articles and podcast episodes.

Finally, if you want to start on or improve your own printmaking practice, we will include a link to the Art of Education University graduate course called studio: Printmaking.

Please explore, enjoy, and find the resources that are right for you and for your students.

Thank you for listening to Ask the Experts. 

The show is produced, edited, and engineered by me, Tim Bogatz, and is part of the Art of Education University podcast network.

Stick with us through all of our episodes as we explore photography, ceramics, painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, and more. Thank you for listening!