Screen printing a design of the Caribbean

Day 1

Goals:

1. To give students a better understanding of how T-shirts are made.

2. Introduce students to a career in art and screen printing.

3. To create an actual T-shirt with the Caribbean in mind.

Time:

120 to 180 minutes

Resources\Materials:

T-shirts, iron, ironing board, computers, graphic program (such as Corel Draw), good color printer, special ironing printer paper, and a guest speaker on screen printing.

Procedure:

1. Discuss with students the idea of creating their own T-shirt to take along on their trip to the Caribbean. They will be in charge of creating the design of the shirt, bringing in their own T-shirt, and printing the T-shirt.

2. First, students will take time to work in small groups to design their own T-shirt. They will be given approximately 60 minutes to create an art design that best represents the Caribbean. Within this 60 minute time frame, students will be allowed to use the Internet to find pictures of fish, coral reefs, animals, pictures of islands, or any picture that best represents their idea for a T-shirt design.

3. Upon completion of their design, students will listen to a guest speaker who will instruct the class on how to make a screen printed shirt. The speaker will talk for about 30 minutes and may even print an actual shirt in class for us (They will also talk about possible careers in screen printing). We will not use the techniques discussed because this process is too time consuming and can be a big mess. Instead, we will use a rather new technique that can be performed on any computer that has a printer. The process involves creating an image on the computer, printing that image out on special printer paper that allows the image to be transferred to clothing, using an iron and ironing board, then transferring the image to the shirt. This process has less mess to clean up and the T-shirts will be ready faster. Allow about 45-60 minutes for this activity.

4. With any additional time left over (30-45 minutes), students will create a class T-shirt design that will be sent off to the printers to be screened. Every student in class will have an individual T-shirt design, and a class designed T-shirt.

Assessment:

No assessment for this activity.

Curricular Strands:

Art - T-shirt design

Careers - career opportunities in screen printing

Cooperative Learning - working as a group to design a T-shirt

Possible Extensions:

Print a newspaper the old fashion way.

Take a tour of a screen printing factory.

Take a tour of a newspaper printing company.

This page submitted by St. Norbert College Ocean Voyagers Program