1. A collaboration between the Tempe Center for the Arts and Tempe High School. But It’s a Dry Heat Mono-Printing Workshop Lesson by Mary Erickson, Ph.D. with art teacher Kathy David.

2. But It’s a Dry Heat Theme in Life: We all live in a place where climate matters. Theme in Art: Art can help us understand what’s like to live in different places.

3. Getting Ideas After the Tempe High School advanced photography and drawing and painting students visited the “Dry Heat” exhibition, they returned to school with the inspiration to create their own artwork based on the same theme.

4. Getting Started Tempe students used the handout “Thinking in Art” to come up with some ideas. Step 1: Brainstorming The first step in art making is brainstorming or finding inspiration.

5. Making a List First, students listed three subjects they were thinking about using for their artwork. Jose thought about how the heat affected the Arizona landscape and what it’s like to travel through a hot desert.

6. Communicating Ideas Second, students described three ideas or themes they wanted to communicate. Karla wanted to communicate ways that people stay cool in Arizona when temperatures soar to more than 110 degrees.

7. Thinking About Design Next, they described how they wanted to use the elements and principles of design to help communicate ideas. Amanda thought about colors. She used a warm palette to emphasize the dry heat theme as she worked with her photograph in Adobe Photoshop.

8. Considering Medium Finally, students explained how the tools and materials they would use would help them to communicate their ideas.

9. Sketching the Idea The next step was making a sketch or thumbnail. They created four thumbnail sketches of their idea.

10. Working with an Artist Then the students were ready for master artist Larry Yańez, to teach them mono-printing.

11. Understanding where artists get ideas Yańez brought sketchbooks and examples of his own work to help the students to better understand the creative process.

12. Making a Mono-Print

13. Carving Tools Sharp tools, like linoleum cutters, were used to remove areas that the artist does not want to print.

14. The Printing Plate Plates can be made of wood, linoleum, rubber or dense Styrofoam. Styrofoam was used For mono-prints. For multiple prints, wood, rubber or linoleum were used.

15. Applying the Ink Thick, sticky ink is rolled onto the plate using a brayer.

16. Ink Transfer Paper is placed on the inked plate and the ink is transferred to the paper by rubbing it with a baren, spoon or printing press.

17. Reverse Images The paper is carefully pulled away from the plate. The image has been printed in reverse.

18. Variations on a Theme Mono-prints can be thought of as variations on a theme, with the theme resulting from some permanent features being found on the plate that persist from print to print. David pulled four prints of his sun to create this artwork.

19. Variations on a Theme Variations are the results from how the plate is inked prior to each print. Variations are endless, but certain permanent features tend to persist from one print to the next.

20. Exploration & Experimentation Once the print is dry, details, textures and values can be added with drawing media like pastels or colored pencils.

21. Exploration & Experimentation Cut out positive shapes of several prints and reassemble them as a collage. Print on top of other art, photos or newspapers.