Prints for children

Engraving is a fun way to develop children's creativity. What is children's engraving, what it is, and how to use it, you will read in this article.

The art of engraving originated in ancient China. Skillful artists carved scenes of everyday life, images of animals, and landscapes with the help of sharp chisels on wooden planks, mesmerizing with their beauty.

Other countries borrowed Chinese art. They began to make paintings not only on wooden blocks.

Engraving is a popular and affordable method of teaching children the visual arts. The technique of creating a work by scratching an image on a surface - scratchboard - is great for children and is popular with parents and teachers.

Engraving captivates children of any age, develops patience and imagination, increases efficiency and raises self-esteem. It is impossible to convey a child's delight when, with the help of simple movements with a special feather or a grating cutter, a picture of strokes, which the child has created with his own hands, gradually appears on the primed canvas.

Creative kits include:

• a sheet of cardboard, primed with two layers of paint with an applied contour for scratching;

• a stylus in the form of a pen with a metal tip similar to a feather with a beveled end;

• instruction.

1. Unpack the engraving. Introduce your baby to the rules for working with a blank.

2. On the cover of the set, look at the photographs of the finished image with your child. Discuss where it is best to start creating, where are the main plot details, and where are the secondary ones.

3. It is better to start creating a drawing with the background and the largest surfaces on the sides of the work.

4. To create an engraving, a child needs to carefully remove a layer of top paint with a grader, under which the picture itself is applied. So, stroke by stroke, children remove the upper dark layer, freeing the strokes of the very base of the drawing on a golden, silver or white background.

5. It is not necessary to press hard on the graver during operation, otherwise the engraving may be damaged. The pressure on the tool should be soft, the movements should be smooth and calm, in the direction from you to the middle of the picture.

6. To make the drawing beautiful, it is important to determine the direction of the engraving strokes and follow it clearly.

7. So, step by step, the child will create a drawing that can be used to decorate the nursery, present as a gift to loved ones.

You can create a blank for children's creativity at home.

1. Apply wax to a piece of cardboard or evenly distribute the oil pastels in the crayons if you want the image to be colored. The wax layer should be uniform, dense, without tubercles.

2. A blank on a white sheet of cardboard will allow you to create a beautiful play of colors and shadows on the engraving.

3. Place the oil pastels in gradual transitions; do not overlap the colors so that they do not mix. Make smooth borders between tones.

4. Cover the cardboard with a thick layer of gouache, tempera or acrylic paint: it does not get dirty and is perfectly scratched with tools.

5. We prime the cardboard with a thick layer of paint in one direction. You need to work quickly so that the surface does not dry out immediately.

6. Let the workpiece dry naturally, then start scratching out the pictures. It is better to work with the tool at an angle so that the strokes do not cut through, namely, they are neatly scratched on the surface.

7. Images are scratched and shaded only in the right direction, not chaotically.

Stationery stores and children's art hypermarkets offer a huge selection of children's prints of varying complexity.

Kits for the youngest artists are designed for children over 5 years old, but if a child works with an adult, you can start creating images with kids from 3 years old.

The first works begin with small pictures with simple plots that are understandable to children, which are created using a small number of lines. These are small engravings on cardboard, where a child discovers a funny picture with simple movements of a plastic or wooden graver.

Favorite prints of kids.

• Plots with forest animals.

• Cartoon characters.

• Pets.

• Floral motives.

Children 5-6 years old, confidently using tools, can master a more complex, larger type of engraving. These are images created on a metallic gold or silver background with a lot of strokes. The contour that the child needs to open is applied to the work surface in a silver color so that the task for the preschooler is clear.

For girls:

• with the image of fairy princesses;

• funny raccoons;

• Pets;

• dolls;

• fantastic birds;

• flowers.

Engravings interesting for boys are:

• space;

• aircraft;

• sea ​​voyages;

• animal world;

• sport.

A popular type of work for children of this age is postcard prints. They are colorful, made on a golden or holographic base of blue or pink cardboard. An engraving postcard can be presented for birthday, New Year, March 8 by a parent, educator or friends.

Popular subjects of postcard prints.

• Animals with gift baskets.

• Bouquets of flowers with the inscription "Congratulations".

• Popular heroes of fairy tales with balloons.

Engraving-notebooks are popular, where children are invited to create not one, but as many as 10 works. Small size books - A6, A5, convenient to carry. Plots of engraving notebooks are easy to choose for a child of any gender and age.

Pupils of elementary and middle grades, carried away by the creation of engravings, create complex and interesting works. Confident shading, precise movements, neatness - and amazing pictures are born on black surfaces.

• Stylized images of animals.

• Fantasy plots.

• Architectural monuments.

The children’s engravings acquire their own character and special mood.