Recovering the Classics

One lesson I did with my Computer Graphics class last fall was "Recovering the Classics". 

I especially enjoyed this lesson as I love reading, but it seemed that most students enjoyed it even if they aren't big readers.

Here is the information from Recovering the Classics

Recovering the Classics is a crowdsourced collection of original covers for great works in the public domain where anyone can contribute.

As part of a new initiative announced by the White House, we are partnering with the New York Public Library and the Digital Public Library of America to bring these amazing covers to libraries and schools nationwide.

Why? Sadly, many of the greatest classics in the public domain are left with poorly designed or auto-generated covers that fail to capture what makes these books exciting and inspiring to us. So we invited illustrators, typographers, and designers of all stripes to create new covers for 100 of the greatest works in the public domain.

Anyone can contribute, and all designs are available for sale as prints, apparel, and other products to support the artists.

Host your own local Recovering the Classics exhibit as part of our 50x50 campaign.

After explaining the project to my students, I shared a google sheet with the class so that each of them could sign up for a book in which they were interested. I asked that if they hadn't read the book they chose, that they do a little research reading summaries and getting a feel for the book and its style. I tried to get them to avoid looking at covers and posters that had already been made for their particular book and to avoid copying the style of a movie version. This is a skill we are still practicing. 

We also looked at some of the beautiful examples of covers designed by artists and collected by Recovering the Classics to show how a style can be developed.

When the projects were complete, I put up a bulletin board with my students' designs on one side and the Recovering the Classics designs on the other. We did a little hallway critique where I asked each student to point out another student's design that they liked and say why they thought it was successful.

Here is a link to a video I took to show the display: https://www.instagram.com/p/-cejiNiKh3/?taken-by=jhartclass

You can also search #RecoveringTheClassics

1st Grade Book Covers (I'm still here!)

I am way behind this year. Behind on Artsonia (like I just finished posting some of our first projects, yikes!), and way behind on blogging. Instead of giving you a bunch of excuses, I'll just share a picture of a one day project I did with 1st grade a couple of weeks ago. We talked about how artists can be involved with books- the illustrations on the inside and the design of the covers. The students pretended that they had written a book and designed the cover. If they finished with that, I gave them more freedom on the inside. Some made more illustrations and some wrote the story!
One class had been given more than their fair share of second chances to correct their volume level in the week before so they "earned" no talking during this class period. That's probably why I thought this little girl was thinking of me when she designed the cover for her new book "The very mean Art teacher." I gave her a skeptical look and she said "What? It's not you!" Then she made sure her drawing had a blonde Art teacher just to convince me. :)
I wish I would have had more time to ask about her drawing!