A Non-Week

This week has been a "non-week", as in, there is nothing exciting or of interest to report.  Tiger has been trying hard to get over his third-time-in-two-weeks cold, so we have been staying indoors and enjoying -- as much as we can muster our good cheer for -- the November weather:

There's nothing quite like a dismal, rainy November week to bring home the reality of my utterly unglamourous life and to spur me on to some form of escapism by looking ahead to December, which signifies (for me, personally) the start of the Christmas season which never fails to bring forth a warm, cozy feeling filled with images of glittering, bright lights.

I don't usually start thinking about Christmas until December 1st, but this week, because it has been so dull, I have taken the liberty to get started on my December/Christmas planning.   I hope to be have a better idea of what we'll be doing in December, and to be able to share our plan in two weeks' time.

We were introduced to Dickens last December while reading The Christmas Carol.  This year I plan to continue to explore The Christmas Carol more in depth (starting from Decmeber 1st), as well as Dickens' other Christmas tales.  We are currently reading The Chimes from the following collection:

I am currently enjoying this little book which gives a good oveview of the Christmas tradition in the context of the larger scope of British history and traditions.  Having married into an English family, I figured it is only basic courtesy that I should learn a little more about my husband's cultural heritage.

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 11/11/14
2. Finishing Strong - Homeschooling the Middle & High School Years Week 37
3. My Week in Review #13
4. Collage Friday - Interest-led Learning: The Underground Railroad
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one where it got cold

Art Summer School: Printmaking

With printmaking, we opted to do Lab 24: String Printing.  It really is one of the easiest activities to set up.

I diluted primary colours of the acylic ink in a plastic container, put one piece of cotton string in each, and let Tiger use the strings to create prints on A2-sized watercolour paper.  In order to prevent the ink from mixing up in the containers after each string has been used on paper, I had to wash each string after each application.

Tiger found 'drawing' with strings to be an interesting exercise so he went on to create three pieces at a go.

I wanted Tiger to experience more than one type of printmaking, so when I heard that an artist friend was doing a demonstration of monotype printing, I asked whether we could go along and he said yes!  That worked very well to coincide with Lab 26: Monotypes, and saved me from having to set it all up.

The basic process is actually very straightforward:

1. Begin by spreading a few dots of printing ink onto the plexiglas then use a brayer to spread the paint evenly on the surface (photo 1).
2. Place a piece of drawing paper gently over the suface and use a pencil to draw (photo 2).
3. When you are happy with your drawing (photo 3), lift the paper up carefully and turn it over.
4. Your print is on the other side of the paper (photo 4).

Tiger then repeated the process using the same sheet of plexiglas and paper but using a different coloured ink this time.

And another go....

Finally, Tiger tried to create two different prints using the same layer of ink on plexiglas.

The first one (top print) was done in the usual way.  The second one (bottom print) was done with another sheet of paper but without reapplying the ink.  It is interesting to see how differently both prints have turned out simply with a slight variation to the process.

You can read all about our in-house Art Summer School series here.


This post is linked up to:

1. Virtual Refrigerator: Phineas and Ferb 
2. Hobbies and Handicrafts - Aug 16
3. Collage Friday - Hitting Our Stride and a Field Trip
4. TGIF Linky Party #90
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One at the End of the First Six Weeks
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {August 17, 2013}
7. Hip Homeschool Hop - 8/20/13

The Art of Hokusai

Following our study of Medieval Japan in history, we delved a little more into the cultural aspects of the country by studying the art of a Japanese master, Hokusai.

Art appreciation - preparation
As usual, I displayed a few of the artist's representative works up on our cupboard for Tiger to familiarise himself with them.

Since we did not know much about Hokusai and his work, we decided to learn more about him by reading the following books:

As with many great artists, Hokusai was a versatile artist in that he was very skilful in many different forms of art, the most significant ones being ukiyo-e and woodblock prints.  I could not decide which style to focus on for our study, so in the process of searching, we first looked closely at one of his works using the following book:

Art appreciation - focused study 
As we learned more about Hokusai's woodblock prints, we came across the The Great Wave documentary, and decided that we would focus on this particular masterpiece:

Once we have decided upon one single piece of work to focus on, we learned more about it through reading:

and completed the observational exercises from the lesson plan here, including mirroring our hand posture to that of the wave:

Field trip
Our timing to study The Great Wave could not have been better since we were able to attend a special exhibition on this work at the British Museum where we not only saw heard an expert lecture on the significance of and story behind this piece of work and saw one of the original prints on display,

we also learnt much about Hokusai's other woodblock prints, as well as the woodblock printing process.

Hands-on Project
We decided that Tiger would have a go at making his own prints following Hokusai's style.  Our project instructions are taken from this book:

First, Tiger had to decide on the pattern that he wanted to print.  After some discussion, he decided that he wanted to print a dragon in the oriental style.  We looked on the internet and found a simplified version of what he wanted:

Next came the transfer of the image onto the styrofoam pizza base.  Since Tiger was not confident about drawing freehand yet, he adopted my suggestion of transfering using the tracing paper.

Once the initial pattern transfer had been done, it was time to 'carve' out the indentation of the dragon.  We used the end of a teaspoon to press on the outline of the pattern.

The printing began after this.  Tiger chose different coloured papers for his base, then applied paint onto template with a roller.

After printing a few monotone copies, Tiger decided to change his output slightly by applying multiple colours to the template all at once.   While Tiger understood that the actual woodblock print process would have used one colour at a time, he did not want to repeat the process multiple times.  Therefore, Tiger's multi-coloured prints were each done at one go.

Extension
After the prints were completed, Tiger wrote an advertisement, complete with a web address and telephone number, to sell his prints for £4 each.  When asked to explain how he came up with the £4 price tag, Tiger explained his rationale: he did a quick mental estimate of the amount of effort involved to produce the prints plus the amount of paint used.


This post is linked up to several blog hops, where you can visit to see what other homeschoolers have been busy with.  It is also linked to the April's edition of the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival.