Teaching Packet

Process and Product: Printmaking

Part of Process and Product

Explore activities, ideas, and artworks to learn more about printmaking techniques- and get inspired to create! This unit features a video with a contemporary working artist who makes prints, image galleries of prints from the National Gallery's collection, an explainer that dives into the basics of printmaking, and a lesson for beginner experimentation with various printmaking techniques. This resource is intended for grades 6-12.

Clare Romano, Associated American Artists, Grand Canyon, 1977, color collagraph on wove paper, Gift of Bob Stana and Tom Judy, 2016.148.44

Grade Level

Subject

Hear From An Artist About His Work

In this video, artist MasPaz discusses his approach to art and making prints for his community.

After you watch the video, discuss these questions.

  • What is the source of the artist’s inspiration?
  • What does MasPaz mean when he says he views his work as an “exercise”?
  • What choices did he make as he planned his prints?
  • What interests you about printmaking?

Prints From the National Gallery of Art

Artists use different methods of making prints to depict a variety of subjects. As you look at each group of prints, consider these questions.

  • How does each artist use scale, color, line, and shape?
  • Which printmaking methods do you see?
  • What preparation steps did do you think the artist took to make the print?
  • Where does the artist repeat a design or pattern?
  • What feeling or story does each print communicate? Why do you think that?
  • What about these prints surprises or inspires you?

Clare Romano (1922–2017) was a lifelong printmaker who pioneered collagraphy, a kind of printmaking. Devoted to the practice of printmaking, Romano spent her professional career teaching generations of students to be printmakers.

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) experimented with different kinds of art, including printmaking. His love for music, literature, and history is evident in his art, and his prints featured repeated themes, like musical instruments.

Lou Stovall (b. 1937) founded the printmaking studio Workshop, Inc., in 1968 in Washington, DC. There he produced his own prints and works by other artists for more than fifty years. His screenprints offer a range of subjects—some abstract, some drawn from nature..

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Educational Resource:  Process and Product: Printmaking

Explore activities, ideas, and artworks to learn more about printmaking techniques- and get inspired to create! This unit features a video with a contemporary working artist who makes prints, image galleries of prints from the National Gallery's collection, an explainer that dives into the basics of printmaking, and a lesson for beginner experimentation with various printmaking techniques. This resource is intended for grades 6-12.

A man and two women standing near a bar nearly fill this vertical painting. Though made with oil on cardboard, the paint is applied in thin strokes, so parts of the painting look more like a drawing, and the tan of the cardboard is visible in many areas. Shown from the thighs up at the center of the composition, the man stands with his back to us, looking away from us to our left, almost in profile. The camel-brown of the cardboard acts as the color of his jacket and the skin of his face, which are otherwise delineated with cobalt-blue and violet-purple lines. He wears a dark bowler hat, and a white cigarette dangles in his lips. A few scribbled black lines could suggest a mustache. Hands thrust into his pockets, he looks down at the bar, which a runs along left edge of the composition. Squeezed between the man and the glasses on the bar, a woman wearing a teal-blue feather boa leans one elbow on the bar and looks back at the man from the corners of her eyes. Her skin is rose-pink and she has curly red hair. Her arched, thin eyebrows and snub nose are set in a round face with a double chin, and her crimson-red lips are pursed. She wears a ruby-red dress or coat and a turquoise-blue, wide-brimmed hat with bubblegum-pink ribbons or feathers. Two small, stemmed glasses sit on the bar in front of the man and woman. Behind the bar, along the left edge of the painting, a man wears a dark vest over a shirt with sky-blue sleeves. A light cloth lies over the shoulder closer to us and he has dark hair. The rest of his features are lost behind the woman’s hat. To our right, beyond the man’s shoulder, a woman stands with her body facing us as she tips back and looks off to our right. She wears a long, black tie over a pale blue, high-necked shirt. One hand is tucked into a pocket on the front of her jacket, which is streaked with mint green over the brown cardboard. Loosely painted vertical stripes below her waist suggests she wears a skirt, indicating this is a woman, though it might otherwise be difficult to tell. She wears a low, royal-blue cap with an emerald-green feather curling up from the back over a cloud of yellow hair. Only the gray bowler hat, ruddy skin around the ear, and a teal-green jacket of a fifth person are visible between that woman and the right edge of the composition. The wall at the back of the space is tan with shell-pink streaks, and a sign with a red triangle against a turquoise background is cropped by the right edge of the painting. The scene is sketchily painted so features are outlined with blue or brown and filled in with streaks of pale color. The artist inscribed the painting in the lower right corner, “pour Metenier d'apres son Alfred la Guigne HTLautrec,” with the HTL overlapping to create a monogram.

Educational Resource:  Process and Product: Painting

Explore activities, ideas, and artworks to learn more about painting techniques- and get inspired to create! This unit features a video with a contemporary working artist who makes paintings, image galleries of paintings from the National Gallery's collection, an explainer that dives into the basics of painting, and a lesson for beginner experimentation with various painting techniques. This resource is intended for grades 6-12.