Computer Graphics Lessons, 1st Semester

One of the high school classes I teach is Computer Graphics. It's basically what I would have called Graphic Design (the name of 3 other classes is Graphic Design so that was confusing at first!) and it's part of the Career Tech Ed (CTE) program. This means that I'm trying to balance hitting the CTE competencies for the class with the national arts standards. This class has been really interesting to teach. I wasn't as excited about it as my other classes at first, though I have probably done more graphic design commissions than any other media or process, but though it's sometimes been a struggle to find that balance, I've enjoyed it quite a bit.

Our first big task at the beginning of the year was to prepare to take school pictures. The school district made the decision to have the art classes handle school pictures several years ago both as a financial decision and to give students experience. Pictures were scheduled for I think the second full week of school so we jumped right in to learning photography basics and practicing in the studio. We did some more fun photography practice with "light writing" and forced perspective, which we did not master by the way, before doing a trial run with the students posing, directing, and photographing.

After school pictures, we jumped into other design projects.

• Fall sports posters- I had students design posters with the fall sports team pictures and a schedule. It seemed like a simple task but there were many students who had never used any version of Photoshop before, so it was good to import a photo, resize, add text, etc.
• PTO shirt design- The elementary school principal asked me about designing a shirt for the PTO to sell for the elementary students and I passed that on to the Computer Graphics class since working with clients is a big part of the CTE program. This is when I first realized that the majority of the students didn't know how to come up with an idea that wasn't a copy of something off the internet.
• Recovering the Classics-  I loved this project. Students designed new covers for books in the public domain.
  
• Client Projects- I wanted students to get some real world design experience working with clients. They had several options from which to choose: designing a logo and program for the school musical, designing a business card for the director of transportation in the district, or designing a logo for the fitness center in one of the district's communities (they were having a logo design contest).
  
• Design for Awareness and Change- Students chose from a list of topics (or got another approved) and created posters that would raise awareness and/or inspire people to change. I will share more about this one later.
  
• Coloring Books for Adults- I wanted to play off of the popularity of coloring books geared toward adults and challenged students to create a page. The plan was to compile the designs into a book that we could print at school and even sell, but we just never got around to printing. I also learned that if you say "adult coloring books" teenagers tend to think of the inappropriate interpretation!
• Font choice and creation- Students learned about font choices and then created their own.
  
• 12 Days of Photoshop- I was inspired by Ian Sands here and did something similar to his 12 Days of Photoshop at the end of the semester.  I used some of the ideas that had been shared on AOE or the Art of Apex, but threw in some of my own. Here are the challenges students did (a couple took more than a day): Hand colored photo, Newimal, Type Mask Tool (post coming soon), It's Alive, Literal Interpretation, Disappearing with the Clone Stamp (post coming soon), creating masks or stencils.
  

I will be posting my 2nd semester projects soon.

Font Choice and Creation

Font choice is so important when it comes to design, and it's not always something students think about. It's pretty obvious when a student uses the font that automatically pops up when they start typing. I decided a little lesson on choosing fonts and creating fonts was in order during the 1st semester of my Computer Graphics class. 

First, we talked about choosing fonts. I was so excited to share the Comic Sans Criminal website with students since it has great examples of inappropriate font choices. It would have been even better if students were familiar with Comic Sans! Most of them were clueless about the font so didn't quite get the joke.

Font Choice Lesson plan

Katie Morris

Jackson Heights High School

Lesson Title: Choosing the Right Font

Rationale: This lesson is intended to teach students to be intentional in their font choices and how fonts can communicate a mood or feeling.

Objectives

1. The class will explore the Comic Sans Criminal website and discuss.
2. The students will create a document in Photoshop Elements (invitation, announcement, sign, etc.) with a font that is inappropriate for the occasion or purpose.
3. The students will make adjustments to the body of their text to avoid design flaws.

Resources

http://www.comicsanscriminal.com

Materials

Laptops

Smartboard and Projector

Procedure- The teacher will lead a discussion on font selection and why it matters. The class will explore the Comic Sans Criminal website and discuss the examples of good and bad font choices. Next, each student will be asked to create a document for a purpose of their choosing but in a font that is wrong. So wrong that it is the opposite of an appropriate font choice. The teacher will demonstrate checking a body of text for design flaws- like “orphans” (single words alone on a line), odd hyphenations, etc. and talk about how to fix the problems. The students should be aware of those design issues while working on their practice documents. If students have a hard time choosing a font or an occasion, the teacher will supply one and the student will choose the inappropriate pair.

Assessment

Students will either print and turn in documents or share them in the Computer Graphics folder on Google Drive.

After learning how to choose the wrong font (and thereby learning how to choose an appropriate font), students designed their own. We used www.myscriptfont.com which allows you to print off a template, design your font, scan and upload it to the website, and download the finished font file. This took us several tries to get right, and it was still tricky to get the font to look level. The other tricky thing was getting students to remember to trace over their letters with a black pen or skinny sharpie so it would show up better on the scanner. I want to do this again next year, but I think having access to the graphics tablets we got through Donors Choose will make this process easier since we should be able to do it directly on the computer instead of on paper and scanning. I would also like to look into other options for actually turning the designs into a usable font so if anyone has suggestions, please let me know!

After the font files were saved on the students' laptops, I asked our tech guy to come and install them. Students then created preview sheets with a pangram and all the characters to show off their fonts. Next year I may also have students design a font that they use for a specific project. Most kind of forgot about their fonts when they were finished. This was fun to learn about and I plan to make some fonts for my use.

Computer Graphics Gelli Stencils

One of the 12 Days of Photoshop challenges in my Computer Graphics Class first semester was to use Photoshop to create a stencil or a mask for use in gelli printing. I have a class set of student gelli plates that are 5x5 inches and brought mine from home in several different sizes.
Most students found they could do this without using photoshop so they just printed their designs and used a blade to cut out the space they didn't want.
The volleyball at the top was created with a mask and a stencil. The student used a mask to block out the circle and a stencil to create the lines on the volleyball.

I really like the painterly look of the Google monoprint.

The love the bird print. The circles in the background are the ghost print of a stencil. She placed the bird mask over the plate to pull this print.

Summer PD

 As I prepare to head back to school next week I've been reflecting about all the learning and professional development I had the opportunity to participate in this summer! It started with hosting KAEA Summer Camp in my hometown in mid-June. There were 3 workshop choices and I did painted batik.

My friend, Tranda (Ag Wife Artist Life) was the teacher and it was SO fun. I'm excited to be able to teach this better now that I've had some guidance as I tried it out.

The week after Summer Camp, I left with 5 other KAEA board members for Elmhurst, Illinois where we represented Kansas at the NAEA Western Region Leadership Conference.

At the conference there were meetings where we worked with other Western Region states' representatives on proposed position statements, talked about the future of our evolving organizations, participated in workshops, visited museums, had fun, and ate some delicious meals.

We learned about a new-to-me art movement, the Chicago Imagists, from one of the artists, Suellen Rocca, and enjoyed the collection at the Elmhurst Art Museum.

One of our meals was sponsored by Davis. That was one of the first opportunities to really kick back and make friends with some of the other attendees. 

We learned about using circuits to make kinetic sculptures, made small needle felted works, and gelli printed. I'm hoping to find a grant that will allow the purchase of some of the circuit kits that could be shared between the art room and the science department. 

The Kansas crew at dinner.

Fun road trip!

In July, a group of my art teacher friends got together to make stuff! First we did a bbq pit fire, which was super fun, and I would like to do on some sculptural pieces in the future.

We used a small bbq grill to heat up our pots then moved them into a metal bin filled with combustibles.

We threw coffee grounds on this mug and got really cool effects.

Later the first night we tried out cuttlefish casting and finally got the hang of it. I hope to be able to add the process to my program this year. (Tranda's post about the process.)

3 different stages of the process- my carving in the cuttlefish, the machine melting the metal, and the can holding the cuttlefish after we poured the molten metal.

Successful casts ready to be cleaned up. I made the pendant on the left and decided I liked the sprues so they will become part of the piece.

This is a cuttlefish or cuttlebone.

 The next morning before we went home, our friend Courtney helped Tranda and I on the potter's wheel. Tranda hadn't thrown before and I am just not super confident on it. Courtney showed me some different "tricks" than I had tried before and I threw probably the best I ever had. I also used stoneware for the first time and I really liked how it felt on the wheel compared to the earthenware clay I've used at school. I'm glad I ordered some earthenware to use this school year.

The last way I did some learning this summer was through Skillshare classes. I found an email in a weird folder with a link to try the premium membership free for 2 months. You know I love free stuff so I signed up. I started looking around and found SO many things to try. I took some digital classes to learn new skills and techniques that I will definitely utilize in my computer graphics class this year and I still have more I want to take. It's interesting to see other people's approaches to a topic whether it's poster design or painting.

One of my goals is to get more students excited about watercolor. I don't think I've "sold" it well enough before. I will use some of the ideas from one of the watercolor classes for my painting boot camp.

I also took a class on hand lettering which was really helpful and very practical. I think I'm going to incorporate her method into a computer graphics lesson this fall.

If you want to tryout Skillshare use this link to claim your TWO FREE MONTHS! There are still so many classes I want to take. I just keep adding them to my list for when my classroom is ready.

Digital Repeating Patterns

Here's a fun project my computer graphics students completed! I learned the basic steps from a Skillshare class that was hand drawn repeating patterns. I let the students start drawing by hand but we finished on the computer. Here is a link to the handout I gave them with all the steps: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ChKRWFiFgo_rDOi1lhNMWZF8jWc1EAj8FEBXxgwHSIo/edit?usp=sharing 

 

I need to explore doing this project in Illustrator. I have only had access to an updated version of the software for about a year and am self taught so I'm not sure of the best way to do it, but I feel like it might work even better, or at least save some steps!

It was really fun to see what objects the students chose to work with.

I will admit that sometimes things don't match up perfectly when you repeat the tile, which doesn't make sense to me, but be prepared in case it happens. We were able to just make some small adjustments when zoomed in and complete a couple lines to fix things.