A friend of mine was kind enough to loan me their daughter for art lessons so here are some things we are doing in my nature printing class. First, we make nature bracelets!

Early Impressions: The earliest recorded form of nature printing was imprints taken with lead, gum, wax, charcoal.

Nature Print Art History-Benjamins: US born polymath and statesman Benjamin Franklin created nature print paper money to deter copying. This also included unusual printing inks, spelling mistakes. These currency notes were intended for use in American colonies. (source)

World Building: We are learning about negative spaces and filling them up with our imagination. We started with places that she knows of- her building:

I am very inspired by the map game The Quiet Year which I played recently at the Glasgow Zine Library. It not only helps you define a landscape but also rebuild something good with a community. We started by making islands with seeds!

This is something I was making during the pandemic while reading the Earthsea series.

They are available free to download here:

Optical Toys: We made a thaumatrope! It is a 19th century optical toy that demonstrates the principle of persistence of vision, a disputed explanation for the cause of illusory motion in stroboscopic animation and film.

With my classes I aim to understand how nature printing- a practice developed in the Middle Ages by those gathering medicinal plants evolved into a serious scientific process and came to influence photography and film. I made a little video of our art so far: