Recently I went to see an exhibit of Karl Hyde’s artwork (of Underworld fame) in Tokyo. His abstracts led me try it out as it simply involves balance, movement and colour. It’s actually more difficult than it sounds. Anyways, I thought I’d add it as adoodle activity and hopefully have students realise that you don’t have to be a super technical artist to have attractive work. Watch how it is poorly done in my video below and view the exhibition promo clip if interested.
I am busy but motivated this year. I find myself teaching just over 10 new units (out of 20), as teaching time for visual art at my school has doubled. With all the cutbacks to the arts I am reading about nowadays, I’m happy. Needless to say, I’m also swamped developing new units, implementing the MYP in grade 6, learning and co-teaching IGCSE (to eventually fade out?) & IBDP Art, as well as finding and creating resources for the new units and undergoing an accreditation at my school. But where else would I be able to have the flexibility, freedom and choice to develop my own units? That’s myelement.
Currently my grade 10s are studying foreshortening in figure drawing. As the classes generally progress, I find the gap widening between those that can and those that cannot. In order to assist, I created this basic tutorial for them at home. It’s difficult as it is the first time for most of them to attempt this. The video is not great, but I hope it helps as a reference. One thing I didn’t utilise in the video was using circles for the knees and elbows.
During class, we measure using markers instead of pencils and they usually have 10-15 minutes to tackle the proportions. We get them to use a yellow marker at first as it does not allow them to erase. They then go over their lines with a darker marker. If any of my students are reading this, let me know if the video helps.
I’ll also try to post some student work soon. You can also view the unit wiki here but it needs a slight update, as I have already changed/dumped some items.
The excellent Tuts+ Network have just made another welcome addition to their family in the form of Sessions. This is something I have been waiting for as some online tutorials for Photoshop/Illustrator etc. at times do not offer me enough steps to clearly understand.
Sessions are blocks of articles, interviews, tutorials and content on a particular creative subject.
Sessions are hosted around the Tuts+ network depending on where each article fits best. So for example web design posts might appear on Psdtuts+ or Nettuts+. This site is like a table of contents for each session.
The aim is to provide lots and lots of mini courses on different topics! That way you can get a variety of knowledge about the creative fields.
From here you might want to jump into our detailed Tuts+ sites to delve deeper into the technical aspects of creativity!
Their first project is right up my alley as I was planning on developing a similar unit for my grade 8 students next year on character development/illustration. Keep your eyes posted as they add different elements each day and projects in the future.
OK, I’ll be the first to admit that my intro video on graphic design is not the best I’ve done. I made it for my grade 9 Art Foundation class as a back-up resource to use at home. I won’t really be using it in class as a lesson (click here to view the week by week lesson breakdown). It’s a real challenge to teach graphic design as well as some Photoshop and Illustrator skills in ten 80 minute lessons. No time to waste.
However, I do recommend the book I gathered the info from. My co-worker Jamie R. once summarised it perfectly by saying you could read it in 15 minutes. This is actually true. The other book is not so bad either, and their website is rather good in offering design problems to solve. I’ve also uploaded a more basic version of the video in slideshow format below, though I’m not so sure you’ll find any use in it. It is very basic and does not go into much depth regarding layout, colour or type. If you teach graphic design and have some resources/projects on hand, I’d love to hear from you! Really, please. (And yes, I know the slide designs aren’t great even though it is on design!)
Kind of a boring post but at school, we had some problems with our printers. Actually, the printers were fine. Teachers and students were simply printing large photo files which blocked up the printer queue. We use wireless Pharos printing, and the photo files that were usually inserted into a text document were rather large.
Photos should be resized and then inserted into a document. This may be easily done within iPhoto itself. Using Jing, our tech director created a video tutorial demonstrating how to do this. You may view this quick PD session here.
Go2Convert is a set of free web based tools that allow you to convert and resize a picture without having to install any software on your computer. It supports over 100 major image formats. Once you convert or resize an image, you can choose to copy the image’s URL or download it directly to your computer. (via SmashingApps)
Scroll half way down the page here to view other resources for Photo Imaging.
I found the video below through Free Technology For Teachers. It reminded me of a humorous previous post I made regarding the same topic, which is above. A perfect introduction.
I stumbled across the Painting & Drawing Channel, a TV show that offers tutorial videos related to well…painting and drawing. The site itself offers videos from that week but they also post their videos on YouTube. Their channel is here. I have included one video below to give you a taste.
I often create basic video tutorials for my classes. They are mainly used as a secondary “refresher” resource for students and linked via our class portal web page. What I like about making them is it saves a lot of time in the long run for both myself and my students. Parents also get an insight into what we do in the class and it helps them understand some of the elements on the rubric. If you relocate to another school, the resources also easily follow. The videos do not have to be elaborate (though efforts should be made to make them well in order to reach and appreciate a wider audience), but I myself am occasionally guilty of rushing, resulting in, well…sometimes basic stuff.
This series of photos demonstrate one process to produce a painting. I used acrylic gouache. First, layers of black tones are applied and then a layer of diluted colour is added on top. This is known as grisaille.
In this video, I used blending stumps (tortillons) and graphite to create a landscape drawing. Scumbling and smudging with these produce some nice results.
I think my next step is to get into Adobe AfterEffects, start actually using my copy of Final Cut Express and have some students produce some of these videos instead and then also get them up on iTunes.
I am making a presentation tomorrow on Creativity, Authentic Assessments and Web 2.0 tools for Japan ASCD (more on that in a future post). Before I get into those web tools, I often encounter teachers and students who are still unfamiliar with some Mac tricks and shortcuts.
MacLife‘s April issue published this article. Not everything listed here may be of relevance to you but if you are “so-so” at using your Mac, you should check out numbers 3 (keyboard shortcuts), 7 (check and repair permissions), 10 (file info) and 14 (how to install more ram on your mac). Numer 3 is almost a must.
Kind of a boring post but at school, we had some problems with our printers. Actually, the printers were fine. Teachers and students were simply printing large photo files which blocked up the printer queue. We use wireless 
