Visual Arts: Motifs, Fonts and Printmaking Texture

Remember from Grade 5

You designed a poster with symmetrical and asymmetrical lettering, used texture tools like sponges and forks, and read signs and symbols.

In Grade 6 you will design your own motif, choose fonts that send a message, and make a relief print with many textures.

The same leaf, again and again

Look at a hockey jersey, a quilt, wallpaper or the beadwork on a pair of moccasins. Often you'll see one small design, like a leaf, a star or a flower, repeated over and over. That small design is a motif. Repeat it, and it becomes a pattern.

Printing is one of the easiest ways to repeat a motif: carve it once, and you can print it many times.

Motifs carry meaning

A motif isn't just decoration. It can be a symbol:

• A maple leaf is a symbol of Canada.
• A poppy is a symbol of remembrance in Canada, worn around Remembrance Day.
• A heart can mean love; a dove can mean peace.
• In Métis art, colourful floral (flower) beadwork motifs are well known; the Métis have been called the "Flower Beadwork People."

Some motifs in First Nations, Métis and Inuit art have special meanings for a family, a Nation or a ceremony, and are not meant to be copied. It's respectful to create your own motifs from your own life, and to learn about others' motifs from the artists and communities who make them.

Fonts send messages too

The style of lettering changes how words feel:

• Plain, simple letters (like most signs): clear, modern, easy to read.
• Letters with little "feet" (like many books): traditional, serious.
• Script (joined, like handwriting): elegant, friendly, personal.
• Decorative letters: fun, spooky, wintry, sporty... For example, letters made of icicles for a winter carnival, or dripping letters for a haunted house.
• Exaggerated letters, like huge bold capitals or letters that get bigger and bigger, can shout, show excitement or show movement.

Ask: Does my font match my message? Can people read it?

Relief printing

In a relief print, the raised parts of the block take the ink and print. The parts you cut or press away stay blank (the colour of the paper).

Artists make relief blocks from wood, linoleum, softoleum (a soft carving block), or even rubber or foam. In school, softoleum is carved with sharp tools called gouges: a V-gouge makes thin, sharp lines and a U-gouge scoops wider areas. Gouges are sharp, so they are used only with a teacher or grown-up supervising, always cutting away from your body. At home, you can make a safe relief print by pressing into a sheet of foam with a dull pencil.

Important: a print comes out backwards (a mirror image)! Letters and numbers must be carved backwards on the block to print the right way.

Textures in a print

The marks you make on the block become textures in the print:

• thin parallel lines → fur, grass, rain
• crossing lines (cross-hatching) → darker areas, woven fabric
• dots → sand, snow, stars, freckles
• short curved marks → feathers, scales, waves
• leaving a large area un-carved → a solid shape of ink

The Inuk artist Kenojuak Ashevak of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, became famous for her prints. Her print The Enchanted Owl (1960) shows an owl with feathers spreading out in bold, patterned shapes, and it appeared on a Canadian postage stamp. Artists in Kinngait continue to make prints today, and a new collection of their prints is released each year.