The Artist of Hadia Gwaii and Bill Reid inspired artwork

I could not do a week on British Columbian artist and ignore the work of the First Nations. I chose to focus on the artwork from Haida Gwaii because I knew later in the week we would be working on Emily Carr, who spent a lot of time creating paintings from this area.

I originally thought I would focus on Bill Reid, but after doing a lot of research to learn more about this art form myself, discovered many exciting artist to present.

I focused strictly on printmaking since I try very hard to provide a variety of projects for the students to discover during the week and thought printmaking would match up well inspired by the artist of Haida Gwaii.

After going over the various forms found in this style of artwork, the students got to work creating an animal of their choice. They worked on copy paper until they were happy with a final sketch. At that time, they placed the sketch on top of a styrofoam circle and traced over their drawing with a very dull pencil, creating a light indent in the plate.

After that, they took the paper off and went back over the indents in order to deepen them and then made two prints in red ink on Bristol board.

When they were finished, I had them once again take the dull pencil and color out anything they wanted to remain red. This was quite confusing at first, especially since the pencil made the area black....that was going to stay red.

You can see why this would be confusing.

Once they had their "ah ha" moment and got the concept, they brought their plates back up and inked them in black.  

They picked their least favorite red print and then we placed the ink plate on the red print to create a reduction print.

I have them chose their least favorite so if they get it way off register the first time, they have a second try without ruining their favorite print. If they get it the first time, then they have a bonus print. In fact, several of them were so happy with their first print that they wanted to leave their second print in red.

Raven, 7 year old

hummingbird, 6 year old

bear, 7 year old

owl, 8 year old

salmon, 7 year old

bear, 9 year old

Raven, kindergarten

hummingbird, 7 year old

owl, 7 year old

turtle, 9 year old

bear, 9 year old

hummingbird, 6 year old

turtle, 7 year old

The afternoon class did the same concept but used wood blocks and carved their plates.  Below are the results.

raven, 9 year old

bear, 9 year old

Although not prints in the traditional sense of the Haida Gwaii work we looked at, these are beautiful works inspired by the amazing artist we studied that day.