Relief Printing, Part 1

How long is a piece of string? We used loads of different lengths at this week’s Pelham Art Club to create pattern blocks which we’re going to use to make our own relief prints.

First, we sketched out some ideas. Artist, Karen Logan, asked us to create one curvy organic design and one using straight geometric lines so that we’d have some good contrasting effects.

We had to remember not to make our designs too detailed so that we’d be able to reproduce them with string. Once we were ready we re-drew our designs on our cardboard blocks.

Then it was aprons on and out with the glue and string. We painted over our patterns with PVA glue and then carefully stuck string across them.

We soon discovered that the simpler the pattern, the more effective it looked in relief.

When our string was in place, we covered the whole tile in a thin coat of glue to add a layer of varnish, and then laid our work out to dry.

The next morning, the glue had hardened leaving our tiles gleaming.

Curved patterns:

Geometric patterns:

We’ll be using them to create repeating relief prints at next week’s after school art club.