Creative Minds – Community Zine Collab for Teens

This interactive program will delve into the depths of drawing, printing and zine-making techniques for a fun, hands-on learning experience that will leave participants feeling accomplished and engaged. Come and learn with members from our very own community about our shared connections to the people, places and things that we enjoy, and discover fun, exciting ways to depict our story with relief-cut printing techniques.

Project Objective: Students will leave the program with one 6″ x 9″ folded zine which features six interior pages, one cover page with a title and one back cover page with all the students’ names. The zine will be printed in black ink using relief cut lino block printing techniques, where each student will make one row of comics and mix and match their rows together to create a non linear story about “shared spaces”. 

Learning Objectives: In this program students will learn all the key steps needed in order to create relief-cut lino block prints. They will learn how to assemble a relief cut tool, how to properly bray ink and press prints, how to transfer a design and how to design an image for relief cut prints. They will also learn all the key steps needed in order to create a folded zine. They will learn how to prepare a sheet of paper for a zine layout, and how to cut and fold a zine out of a single sheet of paper using no glue or staples. 

Week One: Tuesday, October 15 – Comic Design
Students will design a single 6″ x 3″ comic based on the phrase “shared spaces” where they will explore what it means to be part of a community using sequential art.

Week Two: Tuesday, October 22 – Transferring Techniques & Intro to Relief Cutting
Students will use graphite pencils to trace, flip and transfer-rub their comics onto their lino block. Students will ink the transferred image onto the lino block using sharpie markers. 

Week Three: Tuesday, October 29 – Relief Cutting
Students will cut their designs out of the lino block using the cutting tool.

Week Four: Tuesday, November 5 – Cutting & Intro to Printing
Students will finish their lino-cutting and create their first set of prints. They will check these prints for mistakes and finalize any cutting that needs to be done.

Week Five: Tuesday, November 12 – Printing & Folding
Students will fold their blank sheets of paper into a blank zine. They will load their brayers with ink and then apply the ink onto their relief cuts using the loaded brayers. Then they will stamp their lino cuts to transfer the print onto the zine.

Week Six: Tuesday, November 19 – Printing & Folding
Students will fold their blank sheets of paper into a blank zine and print onto them with their relief cuts.