Project Title: Animal Monoprint
Medium: Printmaking
Grade Theme: Animals

Overview: Students will create drawn animal monoprints
Art Skills: Drawing, inking, printing
Process: Students will plan and sketch animals of their choosing (fantasy is ok) including a head, torso or trunk and a body part to make movement (wiggly tail, legs, wings, etc.). They will then draw their animals onto a Styrofoam sheet, pressing in to create relief grooves.  Students will roll ink onto their Styrofoam sheets and then will press the inked sheet onto paper.
Materials: Mixed Media Art paper, Styrofoam sheet, professional block printing ink
Tools Provided by Classroom: pencils
Vocabulary: Printmaking: The artistic process based on the principle of transferring images from a matrix onto another surface, most often paper or fabric. Traditional printmaking techniques include woodcut, etching, engraving, and lithography, while modern artists have expanded available techniques to include screen-printing.

Additional resource: Link to art history and connection
Multiple Subject Integration: science, biodiversity, adaptation, anatomy
*Please note that samples were made by teaching artists.  Students will be encouraged to make their own versions of this project. Please DO NOT show students these samples in advance of the art lesson.

Description Summary: Today students had a special art lesson making professional monoprints of animals. They planned the different parts of the body and drew their animals onto a Styrofoam sheet which they then printed onto paper in bright colors.