Gyotaku!

It's gyotaku time in my art room!  Sixth graders watched this video and wrote "Gyotaku is the ancient Japanese art of fish printing" in their Asian Art Books.  We use rubber fish for less ewwwww factor and make our own chops.

Students use tempera block paint,
and can do whatever colors they choose.

This is our biggest fish

The chop is just made with sticky-back foam
and matboard scraps.  It's printed
with red marker.

The biggest problem I have is students want to "fix" their prints by painting over anything they perceive as a mistake.  Grrrr!  This probably means we need to do more printing to understand what printing is all about!
While I have several more Japanese lessons I could do, we're moving on to China later this week/early next week.  I'm thinking of making brush rests out of clay first to help us with our Chinese artwork.