Recycled Art: Making a Collagraph Printing Plate & Printmaking

In week 2 of recycled art, we used recycled cardboard to create collagraph printing plates, and pulled prints using a variety of techniques using crayons and markers.  When you make a collagraph printing plate, your print comes from the variety of different levels of cardboard you build up. 

Here’s how we made them:

Then, once we had our plates created, we can use them with crayons, or foil and markers to create a print.  The great thing about print making is you can create the same image over and over again, experimenting each time to get different results.

Here is how to use crayons to make a rubbing:

My older group (3rd-5th grade) of students used markers and foil to create their prints.  Here’s how they did it:

Creating a crayon rubbing from a collagraph plate

Print making is unique because you can make the same piece of art over and over again!

When we were finished making prints, we covered our plate with foil and colored in with Sharpies.

Making the collagraph plates with recycled cardboard.

This artist added extra details using washable marker and water!