Polar Bear Prints

Last month artist Stephen Savage came to our school. He read "The Babysitter From Another Planet" which our K-5 students absolutely loved. Original post about his visit here. When my older students saw that the younger kids did collages inspired by another one of his books, "SuperTruck" they seemed pretty bummed that they weren't getting to do that lesson.

I couldn't leave them hanging like that. Since I didn't own all of his books I did a quick online search and found an awesome video of Stephen carving a linoleum plate for another of his books "Polar Bear Morning." I knew this was going to be perfect for my upper grades.

As I've mentioned before, one of my favorite things about his work is the use of geometric shapes. It makes it so easy for students to create complex images in a fun, modern style. This illustrator is quickly leaping to the top of my go-to list for fun lessons. If you aren't familiar with his work, I highly recommend going to amazon and clicking on his name and viewing the author updates for a fun animated video surprise. 



After viewing his video I decided to make this a printmaking lesson. Students could change the paper color and do some as "night" and some as "morning" images. If you want to teach the lesson and skip all the prep, I just uploaded a new resource. Check it out.