- Hey, kids.

We're here at the Windgate Art School in the Flex Studio.

And I'm here with Flurffy and today we're going to be talking about printmaking.

Do you know what printmaking is, Flurffy?

(Flurffy grunts) Well, printmaking is a way of making art repeatable.

And so we make what's called a plate and then we can repeat the image over and over again.

You might have seen printmaking used in different places in your everyday life.

You might have seen it used on a t-shirt that you have at home.

Anytime you see an image printed on a t-shirt, that's done with silk screen.

It's just a different type of printmaking.

Or you might have seen a newspaper or a magazine.

And a lot of times, newspapers and magazines also use printmaking.

Here at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, we have a large collection of fine arts prints and so that's artists who created special pieces of artwork and then were able to print those special pieces of artwork many, many times.

Okay, so Flurffy, are you ready to make your own print?

(Flurffy barks) Awesome, well, before we get started we're going to need some things to create our print with.

Okay, and we're going to be doing LEGO letter press.

So we're going to first need a LEGO backer board.

We're going to need some LEGO tiles.

Yeah, they're kind of these little flat pieces of LEGO and they're all the same height and that's kind of important when we go to make our print.

You're going to need a brayer.

And a brayer is just a fancy tool that lets us spread our ink evenly over the top of our printing plate, right?

You're going to need some block printing ink but if you don't have block printing ink, you could use acrylic paint and a paintbrush to paint on your LEGOs.

Or you could even use just a regular old marker to color over the top of your LEGOs, and that will also make an impression.

I also have this board here that we're going to spread our ink on so we don't get it all over the table.

But again, you don't really need that.

You can use a piece of paper if you have to.

We're also going to need what we call a registration paper.

And this shows us exactly where to put our printing plate and exactly where to put our paper.

All right, Flurffy, first thing you're going to need is your LEGO backer board or your printing plate.

And then we're going to need some LEGOs.

And I'm going to put some here so you can choose the ones you need for your design.

(upbeat music) All right, Flurffy.

Let's see what you got.

Oh, wow, a paw print.

I love it.

Awesome, this is going to be great.

All right, Flurffy, so the next thing we have to do is put our ink onto our inking block here.

Okay, I'm going to take just a little bit of the ink out and I'm going to spread it at the very top.

Now we're going to take the brayer and I'm going to spread out some of this beautiful pink ink.

So see how we've started to get a really even coat here?

That's exactly what we want.

And now that we have an even coat on our brayer, we can then start to put it onto our LEGOs.

All right, so we're going to take your paw and we're going to put it just right there with me.

And we're just going to slowly start to roll over our design here.

And I know it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of ink on there, but it's just enough to make the best possible print.

Let's put it right there in the middle and then this outside line is going to show us where we want to put our paper to make our print in the middle of our paper, okay?

I'm going to scoot it just a little closer to you like that.

And then you're going to help me press down and we're going to rub and rub and rub until, all right, are you ready to see it?

(Flurffy grunts) I'm going to take it right off of there like that.

And look, you have your print.

(Flurffy barks) It's amazing.

Well, I hope you guys had fun today following along with me and Flurffy in the Windgate Art School at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.

Hope to see you soon.

Bye, friends.

(Flurffy barks)