My grade five class recently read the book "Riding the Tiger" by Eve Bunting. The book is a rich and powerful allegorical story of the allure of the gang. The story is beautifully illustrated with hand-carved woodcut art by illustrator David Frampton. After doing some research, I came across some simple directions to create woodcut art in the classroom using styrofoam plates.
The steps were simple to follow - the students first created a basic design on a piece of paper. Next, they drew the design onto a piece of styrofoam (cut in a square or rectangle, rounded edges removed) with a marker.
Finally, they used a pencil to colour in everything that wasn't drawn by the marker - they are supposed to press hard here, leaving the marker lines raised above the background. Those lines pick up the ink and the part colored in with pencil will not.
They then inked the styrofoam with an ink pad or other type of ink, and made sure all the lines were marked with the ink. Quickly but carefully they pressed the Styrofoam onto a piece of paper.
The end results were amazing!! The students were so proud of their work. (O.K., their teacher was too . . . )
