Block Printing with Styrofoam - Creating your Plate

Before we can print our desserts, we have to create a printing plate. To do that, we're going to take our drawing and we're going to tape it down to a sheet of styrofoam that's the same size as our drawing. You want your drawing to be in the center of the styrofoam, so if you need to adjust your drawing due to any placement issues, do that before taping it down. I like to use tape on all four sides to make sure there's no movement during the next step. The next step will require a ballpoint pen. You're going to take the pen and firmly trace over all of your pencil lines. Press down firmly enough to really make an indentation into the styrofoam. If your paper tears at all during this time, that's okay, but try not to tear the paper on purpose. If you're not sure if you're pressing firmly enough, take a moment to check by just removing one piece of tape and peeling up the paper from that area. You want to see a clear, noticeable indentation into the styrofoam. You need to do this for every line and mark that you want to print, so make sure that you are firmly tracing over every single pencil line of your drawing. When you're finished, label your styrofoam on the back with a permanent marker, and then begin to take off the tape one side at a time, checking your work to make sure the styrofoam has clear indentations, and then remove the paper completely. Your final step before printmaking will be to deepen and widen the lines in your styrofoam. You will do this with a regular pencil that has not been sharpened to a point. If your pencil is sharp, just scribble on a scrap of paper to make it more dull, and then trace over all of your lines on the styrofoam. Be careful to be precise with this step. You are now ready to begin printing with your printing plate. Your styrofoam printing plate can be printed using washable markers on wet paper, and it can also be printed using block printing ink. We are going to experiment with both of these methods in class.