Art

This term the Grade 1 and 2 students have been studying two forms of Japanese printing, Uyiko-e  and Gyotaku. Uyiko-e is carving into woodblock intricate design and printing with ink. Of course, carving into wood would be challenging at this age, but a much easier carving material is foam. Students designed a patterned fish and then carved it into a soft printing foam, ensuring that their engraved lines were deep enough into the foam to not allow the ink to get in. Using a brayer, they rolled the black ink over their cut out fish shapes and printed several of their fish onto a glittery blue/green background.  

Artist names are in the picture.

The students then learnt about Gyotaku printing which was used by Japanese fisherman in the 18th century to record the size and details of their fish. Whilst still at sea, the fisherman would rub ink over their catch, cover the fish with rice paper, and press the fish to make a print. Real fish would have made quite a stink in the art room, so rubber fish were used to make our gyotaku prints. A liquid colour salt background was created first, and then the gyotaku prints were cut out and glued on, with colourful coral for the fish to play in.  

Here is Lucy from 2N explaining how to do Gyotaku. 

Artist names are in the picture.