Judy Ledgerwood Motifs

We just finished up learning about contemporary artist, Judy Ledgerwood. Judy is a Chicago-based artist who is influenced by textiles and the pattern/decoration artists of the 1970s. She repeats a motif over and over with slight variations of the design throughout the painting. While Judy is a painter, we practiced our printmaking skills for the project.

We started the project with a worksheet that used our initials to create a design. After creating three initial designs, students chose one and then redrew that design over and over on a small slip of paper. Then they took that slip of paper and taped it to a piece of styrofoam and retraced all of their initial designs with a pen. By doing this, it presses parts of the foam in and creates a relief print.

The second day was spent finishing up their designs and styrofoam. Then we talked about relief printing and I showed them a quick video of what a relief printer does. I then showed them how we would use our styrofoam as a relief print. Students colored their styrofoam with a washable marker. I then went around and sprayed their strip of water with a spray bottle. They wiped off the extra water with a sponge so that their paper was damp and then printed their styrofoam onto the damp paper. Lastly, they gently rolled over their styrofoam with a brayer to make sure that they smoothed all the edges. Having them use the brayer as a smoother really helped their prints turn out better.

Students printed for about two and a half days. They were expected to print the same color all the way across their strip of paper, over and over. When they finished a strip, they could choose another color and do it all over again. They had to finish at least 3 strips of paper but were welcome to print more.

The last day was spent choosing their 3 best strips of paper and gluing them down onto a larger sheet of paper so that it made one large artwork.