Pattern and Design
Primary 3 · Creative Arts
Pattern and Design
Lesson 2 of 3
12 min
Mugisha's class is making a long card for the end of term. He needs twenty stars on it, all exactly the same.
He draws the first star. Then the second — but that one comes out fatter. The third one leans over like a sleepy cow. His hand aches, and he still has seventeen to go.
His teacher picks up a potato and a knife. "Mugisha," she says, "why draw twenty stars, when you can draw one star and print it twenty times?"
A stamp is a shape you make once. Printing is pressing that shape onto paper, again and again.
Every print comes out the same size and the same shape, because every print comes from the same stamp. That is exactly what a pattern needs — a motif that repeats exactly.
Watch what the teacher does, step by step:
A star appears. She does it again — another star, a twin of the first. Twenty presses later the card is finished, and Mugisha's hand is not even tired.
Look again at step 3, because that step is the whole secret:
The high part prints. The low part stays blank.
Paint touches only the raised star, so only the star lands on the paper. That one rule is behind every stamp in the world.
A good stamp is firm (it does not squash), flat on top (so it meets the paper all over) and has a raised shape. A soft, ripe banana fails all three tests!
Uwase has one leaf stamp. Watch her make three different patterns with it.
One stamp. Three patterns. You do not need many stamps — you need a good rule.
Warning
Careful: a stamp prints backwards! Whatever you carve comes out the other way round, like your face in a mirror. Carve the letter R and you will print a backwards R. So if you ever want to print words, you must carve every letter the wrong way round. With shapes and patterns this does not matter at all — which is one more good reason to start with shapes.
Tip
Press. Don't slide. Down, hold, up. If you push the stamp sideways, the paint smears and your clean shape turns into a smudge. Say "down, hold, up" out loud, every single print.
Keza prints a grid of 6 rows, with 3 prints in every row. How many prints in all?
Answer: 18. Six rows of three is 6 times 3, which is 18. Watch out — the answer is not 9. That is what you get if you add the numbers instead of multiplying them.
Gatete's prints come out as grey smudges with no clear edges. Name two things he may be doing wrong.
Answer: (a) he is putting too much paint on the stamp, so the shape drowns; (b) he is sliding the stamp instead of lifting it straight up.
Which is the better stamp — a soft, ripe banana, or a leaf with strong raised veins? Why?
Answer: the leaf. It is firm, and its veins stand up, so they hold the paint and print a clear shape. The banana squashes flat and has no raised shape at all.
Habimana carves the word HOME on a potato and prints it. What will he see on the paper?
Answer: a mirror image. The letters come out reversed and back to front, so they read EMOH. To print HOME, he would have to carve it as a mirror image first.
You have just one triangle stamp. Write a rule that turns it into a pattern.
Answer: there are many good answers. For example: "point up, point down, point up, point down." Or: "red, red, black — then start again." A stamp plus a rule equals a pattern.
What you learned today
Quick check
On a stamp, which part prints?
