Garfield Park Project

How to make Relief Art Tiles With Artist Dan Cautrell

Drawing the Design

Students draw their design, simplify it if necessary Thinking in layers. Then the drawing is transferred to heavy card stock to be cut out. Building from the bottom largest pieces the collage is layered up to textural details.

We had 3-5 idea, drawing and gluing sessions of one and a half hours to complete this phase of the project.

When complete these are glued to a precut wood tile with contact cement. The artist did this part in our shop vent hood, then had the kids apply pressure.

Painting the Tiles

The tile is gessoed (two coats with drying time between) This took one session. Then two different layers of varnish are added, again with drying time. Many of the kids came in on a non-club day to quickly paint or varnish one coat and then leave overnight

The Black Wipe

Finally the tiles receive a coating of black oil paint and then it is wiped off to give the impression of a used printing woodcut. A clear protective varnish was added after the oil paint cured for 2 weeks. The student part of this step was done in one session.

These videos were created by Ms. Gaub. They were filmed with a SONY Cybershot 3.2 digital camera using movie feature. Then they were edited in Windows Movie Maker.

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