Ingenious inventions

The last two weeks at Merton Park School we have been focusing on making our own invention to make into a large scale collograph printed work.

We began by looking back at our initial drawings of machine parts and selecting shapes to work with.

In quick drawings we investigated how shapes could fit together.

We then used the shapes to make a drawing of an imaginary machine.

We gave it a name and thought about how it could work and what it would do.

We explained its features to each other

We then took one or two parts of the machine to make bigger and cut them into templates.

We experimented on a larger scale with how the pieces could fit together to make new machines

The pieces were transferred onto thick card in order to make a collograph printing plate, like the one we experimented with a few weeks ago.

This week we added textures to our new collograph plates. We used  earlier experiments to decide what worked and what we needed to create an interesting machine part.

When our plates were finished we played a game to explore different ways our machine parts could fit together.

There were many satisfying combinations.

We look forward to printing with these plates next week and making them into a giant new invention – who knows what it will do?

These made lovely prints using metallic paints. Ready to make our giant new machine now!