Window Watchers, Episode 4 (May 13, 1954)

hi window Watchers I just got through making a picture with a piece of potato and this is what it turned out to be oh it isn't anything in particular it's just kind of some designing but this is what we're going to do today we're going to make pictures so probably not like this one but something that you could make like this out of a out of a potato it's called potato printing and not have things ready right here and I'm going to tell you this time you can do it I have a set of paints and some paper to print on and a potato and a knife now we'll just lay these things right over here for now because first of all you want to talk to us a little bit about the paint the first thing you should do whether or not you're going to make paint to use for printing or whether you're going to use this paint just to paint a picture with whenever you start you're paying there's something that you should do that will help you and that's this dip your brush into a little jar or glass of water whatever you have and put a drop on each one of the little color plates in the box just drop of water right in the middle and then put another drop in the next one and another drop in the next one all the way down the line now do you know why do this well it's this putting the water on before you get ready to paint lets the water soak into the paint just a little bit and then by the time you are ready to use these different colors the paint has soaked up some of this water and you can get a lot more paint on your brush so that's what we've done right now and now we might as well take and mix up some paint that we're going to be using when we do our printing with data is you can use any colors you want to I think I'll use a red for one of them and we don't need a lot of water the reason that were made mixing the paint before we do any cutting it all in the potato is because by the time we get around to using this paint again that we're going to mix up right here in the tray so the water will have be decorated and the paint will be a little thicker and that's what we need this lick of paint is possible to print with so we'll just mix up some right here here's one color and then I'll wash off the brush and mix up another color maybe a black put some black over here like this so that we have two different colors get a lot of pit and not so much water so we'll put it all in there like that and then we can rinse off the brush in or leave it right there in the jar and set this aside and go to our potato and our night you know I have some scratch paper right here that I'm going to put down for my potato on that I can put all the cuttings on now I have a pocket knife right here that I have to open up you can use a pocketknife where you can use one of your mother's paring knives but whatever kind of a knife you should you use you should remember to be very very careful of it and now you can always something very sharp it's very easy to cut your fingers with as well as anything else so when you do use it be very very careful the first thing we'll do is just cut the potato right in half stick the knife in and cut it right in two there's one cut there another one here right straight through it so that now the potato is in two halves isn't it one of these halves we're going to carve up in a certain way and we're going to carve the other half in another different way and the first one I just say this one over here is we'll do it one way the first time we can draw a pattern draw whatever it is we want to print an outline of it right on the potato just like this let's see what should we draw on top of here well what about a Paul your paw has has some toes on it three so this part have three toes on it and beneath the toes on a paw is the heel or the pad comes down behind it like this and there it is so with the crane or paint even a pencil I can keep it outline whatever it would be this that we want to cut out put it right here on behalf of the potato and then with our knife we cut all around whatever is that we've drawn on their cut around it and we cut away the White Hart and we do that just like this can cut a line right straight across the top of these tools first of all down into the potato so that it goes right down into the side see and then slice across the potato so this one piece right here comes right out like that and then there's a ridge there this part is going to stand up and the white part is going to be cut away now then we can go around the toes like this and cut down just slice that little piece out of there and then pick it right out with our fingers well that's not going to come to me have to recut this line now to come out there it is now we have this corner out we have to cut between the toes too because there was some fight between the toes so just cut down down with our knife slice under it and then we can just rip these little pieces out put them right here on our scratch paper and we are going to cut around this toe here down in between it be very careful of this knife all the time you don't have to press too hard or cut too fast just take your time and be very very careful when you're using your knife then around the last tow it will work here might as well make this slit right along this heel part of the picture that we've drawn on their slice it off with pick this one right off there like that here's a little corn that didn't come off and now it's off so we have holes right between all the toes there we don't need this little piece over here on in cut that piece off to there we are now that comes apart of getting the piece of white potato out right here so we can make a sliding cup once this way and then in the other direction and now see the tail right out of there so that all we have left are these three toes that are sticking up see how they're sticking up from the rest of the potato there they're raised up above place we sliced off right here then we can turn it around and start working on the heel you can cut right around he loved the paw that were that we're making the print down into the potato all the way around it and then slicing this off now watch your fingers going around the corners knives slips on time and would be better much better than have them slip going away from you then toward you there we are and now all we have left standing up here is the part that we want to print now it's already colored a little bit but we want to take the paint that we mixed up before right here and now mine I see has dried out so it's almost too dry it's very very thick so I'm just going to add just a little bit of water to it like this mix it up some more and then i'm going to lay the potato with the part that i want to print this part right here right down in the paint right there press it around so that when we pick it up and wipe some of the extra paint off with our brush this is what we have left paint on the part that we want to print and then we can take our paper right here like this take the potato and put it right down on top and press it down and lift it up and there's our print I see this little place right here this is the paper showing through somewhere on this part of the potato that we've cut up there wasn't any paint so we'll go back to the potato again paint it on with our brush this time so that we make sure that there is paint all over there now we'll try and make another and there we can make a regular casts of footprints along here there's one here is one and just corner one here at the top it looks almost like somebody's been walking right across the paper sometimes you can make several prints with just by just applying the paint one time one time only but you see the paint isn't this dark on this one is is one of the first ones that we made but you can it you can get Oh several different effects that way by using the paint that you put on over and over again well then there's another another way that we can do potato printing I can take one of these little slices that I've cut off here and dip it right in the paint so that I have paint along one of the ends there see put it down on the paper and it makes a mark 2 i'll tell you what i'll make a flower down here if i put two of these prints together this that can be the stem one over here and be a leaf that's coming on the side and then i can go back to my potato and cut it up making different shapes out of part of it here's one that's half round on the end see it's straight across here half round well i could choose that for a pedal on the flower that's why don't i use that for the pen lot of flour I'll put some some of the paint right on this end like that go right over here press it down and there are the petals on the flower see how they keep getting lighter and lighter I don't put paint on them again but it makes a very interesting thing that we can cut this in half like that maybe use a different color this time it's more paint on it now if you're using the paint that I'm using it's going to be alright because it's a it's a darker color from the one that I use before but if you're going if you were first using a red then you wanted to use some yelling you should wash the red off of the piece of potato or else cut another piece of potato otherwise you know the colors are all will all run together we'll put this down somewhere maybe this is a toadstool may be growing other toadstool right there and then we can put a stem on this toadstool to with the piece that we cut before we can cut all sorts of different kinds of shapes on here like this and just make all sorts of things you can cut regular leaves that you write and want to take a leaf and put a pin a leaf right on here and draw around it and then cut away the outside like we did when we're making the Paul and you'd have a perfect outline of a certain kind of leaf and then pink leaf like we did with the paw and press it down on there and there you had your leaf again it looks sometimes the potato seeps through the water and the potato seeps through and it looks like there's little vans running to the lead you might want to get a whole lot of white paper and make a little print of something up in each corner you can use it for stationery you can't even put little prints on the backs of envelopes if you'd like and you know to use texto paints in a plain ordinary water paint you can put prints with these potatoes on the corners of material you've been for napkins or handkerchiefs or even table claws we use almost a whole potato well I hope you have fun working with your potato printing I know I'm going to do I