A mini walking tour of the Digital Art Studio Lab Classroom

I always showcase things of the studio art classroom but rarely do you see anything of the digital art studio classroom/lab other than finished artwork on occasion. So, here is a mini walking tour of that classroom.

The two courses that I teach in the digital art studio computer lab classroom are Graphic Design (which utilizes Photoshop) and Digital Studio (which uses Illustrator). Despite what the names of the courses imply or suggest, the Graphic Design is basically Digital Art I and Digital Studio is Digital Art II. One of my goals for this year is to change that within the course catalog so it makes a little bit more sense and there is better clarity with regard to how the two classes are connected.

Something else that you might have noted from the video is that I use a classroom management tool that is something I found from Pinterest. It's an "am I done" sort of check-list and I have it printed in color and laminated and then tacked in strategically decided upon places all around the classroom. The art teacher who originally designed it deserves so much credit for it and MORE because it is beautifully designed and created and BRILLIANT for the purposes of answering the question that the students always have of, "Am I done (yet)?" If you are interested in it, I wish I had the direct link to it but I cannot find it but the blog is HERE and it's called "The Lost Sock."

Following Directions is a Good Thing | Reading in Art Education

A little more than a year ago I proudly proclaimed the fact that I, too, am a reading teacher no matter how it much it might seem that reading in visual art and design does not naturally exist or belong. I'm happy to report that later I am still insistent on teaching reading in my content area!

One of my favorite ways to do this is to teach students to read directions and how to follow them exactly as they are written. I do this in graphic design by requiring them to do tutorials from one of my favorite photoshop reference books called The Photoshop CS3/CS4 WOW! Book. I have used this book for four years now and though that might seem like what it offers would be dated, I still feel like it's a great text to teach with. It offers all sorts of useful tricks, tips, and teaching of techniques in clear and concise ways that also include screen captures alongside the very technical but also user-friendly language.

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray :: Tickets

We've got tickets!!!!! 

 

This is the first year that we have done vertical orientation of the ticket design but with the hairspray can that is easily the core of the overall design of the show, well... it works, don't you think?

The tickets are color coded not only because it looks really cool like that but more to help differentiate between the different showings. We haven't done color coded tickets before this year but it has worked out so well to do it like this that it easily might become a standard thing for every show from here on out.

This past long holiday weekend I spent the majority of my time at school working on the set so I will be sharing pictures of those adventures soon enough. We still have a week and a half until opening night and thankfully we are pretty well on schedule with everything. 

Something you can't see about the tickets are that each are hand numbered to correspond with assigned seats in our performance arts center at our school - it is actually used as much by other organizations as much as it is by us - and the tickets are printed on nice heavy-weight paper with a semi-gloss finish so they serve as mementos for the show just as much as they serve as functionality to provide access to the specific shows!

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray :: Promo posters

The promo posters has turned out pretty well, don't you think?

So I previously shared with you all what the general graphic design would be for the annual musical production would look like at least in its working stages and I am happy to report that it was approved - not only by the directors and producers of the production - but also by the governing organization of musicals (who provide us with the materials for the musical) themselves! One of my colleagues who also does graphic design and handles a major amount of the performance arts goings-about here took the core design that I was able to pull together and the above is the official poster for the production! Hurrah!!! One more thing down!!!

The graduated color and the pink and white writing work well for it I think and the general design (colors, layout, etc.) is also going to inform both the ticket design - this year is the first one we are doing a vertical design for the ticket - as well as the roadside banner that will be staked out at the school's entrance gates.

I will try and share the ticket designs when I finally get to see them as well as the roadside banner and then also the tweaked t-shirt design when it is finally printed and shipped in next week sometime. Until then? I am working over this coming long weekend on the actual set of the production. There is a TON to be painted, detailed, and still constructed yet. An art teacher's work is just never done! (Good thing I love my job so much and I would do all of this anyway. *wink*)

Behind the Music(al) :: Hairspray

Sorry I missed you all yesterday! I had a sick day because I had to go to a sort urgent doctor's appointment but thankfully I checked out OK so here I am! And today I bring you the design process and (mostly) finished graphic that we will be using for the Hairspray production...

If you didn't know, part of my job is teaching digital design and art as much as it is teaching traditional studio design and art. I teach two semester classes of this - one focusing on Photoshop and the other focusing on Illustrator - and because of my know-how for both design platforms, I have become a bit of an in-house (read: and too many times to count last minute) graphic designer for things at times. *sigh* I have a love-hate relationship with this sort of thing for all of the most obvious reasons.

For the purposes of Hairspray, there was never a plan for me to do the design work and the goal was to have a very talented senior graphic design student do it. Then all of the craziness of January happened and all of the best laid plans that were made (to have it be student created) went out the proverbial window. Thankfully, there was just enough time for me to be able to do it and I had enough information from the student in addition to a rough digital draft of what she had planned to do that I still feel like it would be fair enough to call this a collaborative effort.

Now before I go looking like some rockstar graphic designer, please know that the design work of this was not entirely my own! As I said before, the original student designer had a specific idea in mind to have a hairspray can as a central part of the design. The asterisks were something that were specifically requested by the faculty director and producer of the show so that they could be a graphic element that was seen throughout the set designs. The classic wig and "cut-out"-style lettering are supposed to be an obvious nod back to the original design of Hairspray. In terms of the actual elements I used, I did not originate all of them myself. The hairspray can was actually a generic vector file that was editable and I bought it for about $5. I mean, I suppose I could have made it but when I was in the midst of figuring out how I would do it, I stumbled upon the vector image and figured why not just save myself what would have been a few hours of work and buy it. I mean if time is money, my time that would have been hours long is certainly worth a measly five bucks that would allow me to call it DONE. And so? That's what I did. Why reinvent the wheel right?

In terms of the color palette, I tried my best to adhere as much as possible to the color palette that we picked for the show (seen previously in a posting last week) and I also tried to pick colors that would work together to make each other pop. Case in point: the background of the logo is purple (it's supposed to be representative of the official t-shirt that the design will be printed on) and the spray represented by the triangle is yellow.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with this piece and it has gone over well for the most part. I did do some slight tweaks to it - so what you see up there on the right is not final - but I will show you the final design once it gets back from the t-shirt printers as well as showing you how the design was also put on promo posters, the roadside banner, and the tickets and front cover of our "playbill" once all of everything is printed and delivered in a few weeks.

Lesson idea: Tilt-shift with Photoshop (Artwork) - Digital

These pieces are a continuation of the collective I started to show you when I introduced the lesson plan idea here.

The difference with the sampling of these images from the others is that these are not photographic and fall in the category of being more classically studio art. They are paintings and drawings/illustrations. It was both interesting and challenging for the students to render this type of work in tilt-shift as compared to the photographs because it really forced them to envision what the rendering might look like before they even applied it. In a lot of cases they had to start over with their renderings OR select new images of artwork because the tilt-shift effect didn't work as it needed to adhere to the classic style of tilt-shift stylings that utilized a linear gradient, and required a boost in saturation and contrast.

The students who were most successful with their finished pieces also ended up being students who have felt most challenged in previous projects that some of the more advanced students did really well while some of the advanced students struggled and produced pieces that weren't as well tilt-shifted.  I really like the idea of this project regardless of the way most of them turned out though because it draws in the fantastic idea (that sometimes exists of visual art) that a piece of art can be so compelling that you want to get right into it and surround yourself with it. One of my favorite movies ever is "What Dreams May Come" and this project as it applies to artwork rendered in tilt-shift style definitely indulges my own ideas of "what if" with regard to the idea of the movie.

Lesson idea: Digital Graffiti

Last year a student artist was commissioned by one of my colleagues to do a huge graffiti mural in the back of a classroom. It was a HUGE hit not just because it was very well done on the whole but because of the fact that it brought the idea of putting something very unorthodox and usually unwelcome in its natural state into the classroom as a front and center type of focus. Stiller, despite the fact that it is indeed graffiti-style art, the teacher made sure that the subject matter of scholarly and thought provoking by choosing the message to 1) be written in Latin and 2) nothing less than encouraging of his students to invest themselves in integrity of the cerebral sort.

Since the mural was made the rest of the student body cannot quite get enough of graffiti style art. The challenge with that? Well, there are many...

1. It's a very specific style of artwork/art/design that is actually not all that easy to create by just anybody
2. It is known to be very subversive in nature and the school I teach is very conservative in its values
3. In order to do true graffiti work, I would have to provide the students with both spray paints and serious encouragement to paint surfaces that otherwise shouldn't be spray painted

I respect the student artist from whom they are drawing inspiration and I respect the artform itself.  I want to encourage their curiosities and also give them the ability to explore and create rather than discourage and criticize. Because of all of this, I wanted to give them an appropriate venue to create graffiti as they would like it and offer a different angle for the content of the message they were delivering. 

We had a small discussion about visual communication and how to most effectively do it and also looked at examples of graffiti that was more positive in its message rather than negative and offensive. We also discussed the use of typography as an art and they had the opportunity of looking at and installing stylized fonts onto their computer stations in order to implement them into their work. I directed them to use the site Dafont.com as it has a great archive of stylized and decorative fonts specifically for personal use.  

Their assignment was to render digital graffiti so that it was photographic and realistic in nature while also communicating a profound and uplifting message. Here are some of the ones that I feel like have best adhered to the assignment.

The students completed a tutorial from their textbook (that instructed them on how to apply graphics to textured surfaces) before doing these personal pieces but they've already learned a great deal about how to use and manipulate design layers, blending modes, and transforming tools in order to assist them in achieving realistic and high quality work.

Lesson idea: Levitation Photography - Digital

As promised, here are the student pieces from the Levitation photography project. This project came from the fact that the students wanted to do more photography specific assignments as well as from my own goals of scaffolding photoshop skills and keeping up with trends in photoshop "tricks."

The students had no formal tutorial that they were following for this project and the rendering process they used was informed by both previous experience/tutorials as well as their own understanding of how photoshop works. I urged them to approach this project such that their images yielded a surreal feel to it and we looked at samples of both levitation photoshopped images as well as surreal artwork. Each piece was evaluated not only for seamless rendering but also use of color, placement of lighting and shadows, and of course creativity. I offered them in class time as well as photography assistance for getting their pictures taken since it's always an advantage for this type of work to have greater manual controls over the functions of the camera when you are taking the picture so as to yield the most accurate exposure and shadows. You can always add those things in photoshop but getting it right in the camera will always be better.

Overall the students did very well. Some of them attempted to create very surrealistic type depictions while still maintaining the natural backgrounds while others completely conceptualized fictitious environments for them to be levitating within.

Lesson idea: Alter Ego Photography - Digital

This project is a favorite of the graphic design students. Most students take the course thinking that we are going to do "cool stuff" to their photographs and are very disappointed by the fact that they don't use their cameras very much. There is actually not much photography that is required with the exception of a few projects. This one is one of them.

I first saw this project idea over five years ago when I was an avid blogger on a much lesser known blog community hub called Diaryland.  One of my fellow D-landers was a graphic designer for a major magazine publishing house in NYC and during one of her down times between deadlines, she posted some images of herself digitally cloned. I thought it was SO cool and tried it with my own self-taught photoshop skills (read: more like hacks). I was able to do it reasonably well for myself but I kind of was doing it just to see if I could do it so there was really no point to even doing it in the first place. I ended up mentally bookmarking it for a later time when it would serve a better purpose.

Three years ago (when I was blessed to be able to step into this position) the curriculum for this course was wide open. The instructor before me had very limited experience with using/teaching photoshop and I was told point-blank that the sky was the limit with regard to the class and what could be done. I immediately thought of the clone photoshop trickery that I was once so enthralled with. Funny thing is that it was also something that had become a bit of a fad for others as well. In my research to show my students examples of what could be done, I found a whole flickr community dedicated to it and the idea was also featured on one of the Real Housewives franchises. (Don't judge/hate that I just openly admitted that I have seen this series. *wink* For the record, I am not an avid watcher of it.)

Because I have been a fan of this project long before I was a teacher, the tutorial did not originate from textbook that we use for the class. I created one that used pictures of my daughter taken at home that walked them through the general steps well enough that they could refer back to the steps to create their own pieces.  Overall? This project has come a LONG way in terms of the polish that the students have added to their finished pieces. They are no longer just merging multiple images together to be within one frame. Now they are employing great acting skills to be able to interact with their digitally cloned selves in addition to thinking about  a larger picture of what they are ultimately trying to say with their multiple selves. Their technique with merging the images is also better and the renderings are a lot more seamless. I encouraged them to try and not use flashes and also pay attention to lighting in their final images. They had a lot of fun overall that I added a second very similar self-photography project into the curriculum that introduces the idea of surreal photography and levitation. (I'll be showing images of this some time this week!) Here are their clone/alter ego images just to whet your palettes. I'm so proud of my students! They really are doing well and making great strides overall.

Lesson idea: Photograph to Painting - Digital

This lesson idea is for the Graphic Design course I instruct and originates from a tutorial found in The Photoshop CS3/CS4 WOW! Book by Linnea Dayton and Cristan Gillespie. This is the second year I have used this book and it really works well for this class. It provides well-thought out and well written/instructed lessons that really addresses some of the "cool" things that can be done in/with Photoshop and also provides as a great reference item for just about any question or issue the students have had. The class I instruct is beginner with regard to Photoshop experience but intermediate-advanced with regard to visual art understanding and ability. I have a number of tutorials I have adapted as well as authored (based on my own self-taught abilities) and I use those to supplement the book in order to address the unique needs I've encountered in the classroom. I did a good amount of research before deciding on the book but it has really served as a great text to base the class upon. It also serves as a wonderful spring of resources for project ideas in the digital medium.

I run the Graphic Design/Photoshop curriculum/classes like this:

1. I give them a tutorial (either from the book or something I've adapted to best suit their needs) that will take about a week to complete.
2. The students take the following week to do a personal piece using the skills they attained from the tutorial experience. Usually there are some parameters but they are given a lot of creative liberties for the most part. 

Doing things in the manner of the aforementioned really allows for the students to both learn skills/understanding of Photoshop as well as gives them a well timed opportunity to apply them. Each lesson/project also builds upon itself to scaffold more advanced skills/projects.

This project/lesson idea utilized the tutorial found on p. 395 of the text called "Wet on Wet" Acrylics. It took a photographic image and digitally rendered it with effects to make it look like it was hand painted in our traditional art studio class. It was fun as much as it was a great learning experience for the students since it called upon previous experience in the traditional studio in order for their digital brushstrokes to be more realistically rendered. It was a bit challenging for them (at first) because they couldn't wrap their minds around the notion that the platform of Photoshop offers a virtually (no pun intended) unlimited supply of any kind or size brush that they could imagine or have been able to actually work with but eventually many of them "got it." They were given the option to use their own photographs as well as stock images. I strongly encouraged them to use images of animals or landscapes over people since the digital rendering into fine art painting ultimately results in an impressionistic art effect and therefore makes fine detail work very challenging to showcase.

Here are some of the best pieces of student work that I picked from three classes total starting with animal subject matter...

Here are some of the landscape pieces:

I am beside myself with the strides that some of the students have made! The lot of them are very talented in the visual arts aside from the classes they have taken with me/during their time here at school but aside from that, I know each of these students very well and I will tell you that they are all making tremendous progress with their abilities and skillsets.

Student Work/Lesson Idea: Animorph portraits - digital

Last year was my first year at this school and some of the classes I was tasked with leading were Computer-aided (CAD) Graphic Design classes.  Now, I can hold my own in terms of navigating Photoshop and other such photo manipulation softwares but for the most part?  I'm self-taught with what I know how to do (which is probably somewhere between intermediate and advanced if you want to quantify it) but mostly?  I'm a hack at it.  I have learned through my own trial and error, tutorials that I've been able to find via Google, and by way of assorted and random textbook tutorials that I've gotten from others.  Needless to say, last year was a huge growing experience for me but I did make tremendous strides in learning how the best ways to teach a CAD class as well as becoming reasonably proficient in my technical writing skills.

Most of my planning periods last year were devoted to writing and converting tutorials (to be used for Photoshop CS2) for my students to use in class.  It was a tireless job but I was committed to doing it.  I had a few archived lessons from previous instructors before me but many of them weren't intensive enough for the level that I know my students wanted to and could work at.  Just the same, after I finished out the semester, I realized that for all of my own tutorials that I had written, I would be stupid not to start researching a textbook that could be used because ultimately?  I'm a hack at it all and the students needed to learn the fundamentals of photoshop the right way.

I researched a number of textbooks and settled on The Photoshop CS/CS2 Wow! Book.  It got decent reviews and was reasonably priced if bought at a used rate versus brand-new.  (I also got the  Illustrator version of the book and I'm planning on using it when I teach the Advanced Graphic Design class this coming Spring.)

Recently the students did a tutorial in the Photoshop book (found on p. 615 of the book) called "Applying an image with Liquify."  The jist of it is that you take a print of an animal and then apply it to the surface of someones skin.  The example use stock photography of a female model and a zebra print.  Each of the students were instructed to complete the tutorial and then create two more versions using pictures of their own, stock photography, and other animal prints.

The students had a lot of fun with this project and I will definitely keep it in my archive of winners for future classes. It was relatively quick to get through with them - I gave them about a week (five classes at 55 minute blocks) to complete the tutorial and then two other self-directed pieces - and I feel their outputs are both high-quality and impressive to look at it.