Drawing inspiration from Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species, Year 6 pupils have been exploring collagraph and mono-printing techniques within their art lessons in term 3.

Altogether, before the copyright of his book expired in 1901, the publishers had printed 56,000 copies in the original format and another 48,000 in a cheaper edition. To celebrate this, we considered the history and development of the printing press. The Victorians mechanised and automated the process, making it many times faster.  Hurray!

Pupils started the project by drawing and painting finches and butterflies from photographs. They then used these images to create collagraph printing plates. Collagraph plates are made from a collage of material – we used card. The pupils inked up their plates using 2 or 3 colours and learnt how to use a rolling printing press. This was a very challenging process from start to finish and the pupils have done exceptionally well.

Many of the pupils also gave mono-printing a go, producing one off prints.