Making a Printing Block
In this section we will look at some of the different ways in which students make a simple block to print from using easily available materials or things that can be found in the classroom.
Tools
Materials
Textures
Making a Polystyrene Block
Packs of polystyrene blocks can be bought cheaply online, or better still, re-use polystyrene packaging. Polystyrene can be easily cut with scissors and marks are ‘drawn’ into it using a pencil, which creates a textured surface. The ‘drawn’ parts will remain white when printed.
Making a Collagraph Block
Collagraphs are made by building up layers of texture onto a backing plate. A simple way to do this in the classroom is to use a thick card (cardboard boxes are great for this) as the backing plate and then build up layers using a variety of textured materials, such as embossed wallpaper or wrapping paper, fabrics (such as hessian) and bubble wrap, etc. The finished plate is then inked up and printed.
