The Student Teacher and the Paper Crane

Being a student teacher is overwhelming, I remember. I had a student teacher the first half of last year who showed great courage, innovation and was open to all I had to share.  He had a lot of enthusiasm, energy, a positive attitude, and, well...youth.  He has an MFA in painting, but of course, he had to come up with digital lessons for me.  With very little experience with photography, he came up with a lesson that was very successful.  [Note: Our dedicated classroom server crashed last year and the images are now lost in the great ether of memory. Some students were actually listening to me and backing up their work, but until I track them down or do this again, there is no example at this time.]

One of the challenges of teaching is how to add enough surprises and variety to keep the students motivated and excited, while at the same time not creating anxiety with too much to think about, and my student teacher pondered all those.

He came up with the idea of taking the students away from the computers for a little bit to make large white origami paper cranes out of the large 80# drawing paper. Origami paper cranes, the little exercise that seems to have a meaningful connection to humans, the subjects of great children's books and legends, still a subject of contemporary art.  The students got to practice their listening skills, because if you don't pay attention, the crane doesn't turn out right. And they laughed and got to know each other a lot more than just sitting at their computers.  

These paper cranes were now the subjects of their next black and white photo assignment that was simple and elegant: The paper crane must be in one of the rule of thirds power points or grid lines. You must have conscious and interesting lighting effects and shadows, with one being strong sunlight, one being soft, diffused sunlight,  and one being artificial lighting .  (Large white paper cranes make good subjects for demonstrating lighting.) And you must use interesting angles of view. 

I think giving them all a predetermined subject that was portable and cooperative created great innovation and enthusiasm and every student was successful.  This lesson idea is a keeper. 

Maggie Taylor: A Photoshop Master

Seems like I'm catching up on making sure I share all my favorite books. I have done a Maggie Taylor project for several years with my Photo II and my Computer Graphics I students. Taylor is magnificent and she is an official Adobe Master.  She's married to the great photographer Jerry Uelsmann who creates amazing surreal photography in the traditional darkroom, but she has fully embraced Photoshop as her darkroom. Her work is intriguing. She does not tell concrete stories, but has snippets of connections to memories, leaving you wondering what the story could be.

The way I approach this project is that I ask my students to remember, or ask a family member to tell them, a family story. We discuss how family stories morph over the years and how surreal they almost seem. The students must then collect images that will help tell the story and use blending modes, tinting, and brushwork like Taylor does to pull it all together.  The results that I've had have been beautiful, and some of them very moving. Last year a student's image had two men in a boat on a humongous wave, with beautiful Photoshop brushwork creating a dark and stormy, frightening scene. I don't ask about the story until the end, and we all were aghast when she explained that her father and uncle failed 3 times to escape North Vietnam in a small row boat. Each time they were caught and imprisoned. The fourth time they succeeded, and she and her siblings were born here in the US. 

Hand Lettering

I think the subheading of the top book really explains it. Our culture has developed a fondness for hand lettering again. I even see exquisite hand lettering on chalk boards in coffee shops. It's become part of hip business's identity.  It is independent, expressive and full of character, like we all secretly want to be. My students love these books. The second book has an unfortunate title for high school, but has an inspiring variety of hand lettered type faces.

I do hand lettering projects with my traditional media class, but you could also scan student hand lettering to a final document for a digital class.  This is also yet another connection to the popular nostalgia of the late 60s and early 70s when hand lettered posters were everywhere. Do I age myself if I tell you I still remember how cool doing my name in bubble lettering was?

So, last week I put up my hand lettering bulletin board and one student said, "Hand lettering. My favorite project!" So, then I realized I had to not just do it in Art 1, but in Art 2 as well.  

There are so many concepts to tie hand lettering to. I've done character education: design a poster with hand lettering with a quote about compassion; social commentary: What do you want to tell society? Say it in a hand lettered poster. Another I will do soon is hand lettering inside a shape.

Another good resource to inspire them is the dafont.com website. Some of the fonts are first hand lettered. Remember that when you click on the name of the font, you usually can see the complete alphabet.

Caution: One of my senior students used all her amazing hand lettering skills to do a poster for the Art Club. One of the administrators saw it and then insisted that she do a very large banner for an administrative retreat...which took her a whole month to finish.  So, beware, this could lead to a side business.

Great Resource for Design Information and Projects

Victoria Torf at SOMA  (School of Media Arts) has a wonderful site of graphic design units, including introductory information including videos as well as projects.

Stop Motion Animation Examples

Every year there are more wonderful stop-motion animation examples that inspire creative thinking. But the old ones are still great because even though we may have watched one enough times to no longer be excited, this might be the first time our students have seen it. I love to watch their faces and hear their comments.

This year, my favorites are:
"Tony vs. Paul"   One of my favorite. I usually start with this one.
"Gulp" by Sumo Science and Aardman (Wallace and Grommit folks)
Make sure you also show "Gulp:The Making Of..."
"Lost Things"   which is a music video animation
"Sorry I'm Late"
"Tee Shirt Wars"
"Erbert & Gerbert's: Human Flipbook"  and the making of it
"Muto", an animation by Blu.  I've watched this dozens of times but I still love it.
"Tony vs. Paul"   One of my favorite. I usually start with this one.
"Minilogue"  White board animation
Post it Note animation  (there are a lot of them out there)

Basic Steps for Stop Motion Project

1. Show and discuss examples.
2. Show examples of storyboarding. (The Incredible Adventures of Wallace and Grommit DVD from Aardman has storyboard examples in their Special Features section.)
3. Ask them to get into groups of 3 or fewer. (Doing it solo is very difficult. More than 3 you often have someone who doesn't actually take part. Three seems to be the magic number.)
4. Give them a theme or concept (this year our theme is "summer vacation" or "graduation" because we are going to show them the last week of school, but you could use deeper concepts, like "hope" or "challenge") Have them get into their groups and  brainstorm their story and method. Remind them that a good story needs several surprises to keep us interested and feel glad we watched it. If it is predictable it becomes ho hum no matter how much fun they had making it. (This seems to be a very difficult concept.)
5. Give them storyboard paper and approve their storyboards before they start. I suggest they aim for a minimum of 15 seconds.
6. Provide the materials for their idea or tell them to bring the materials. I have several small white boards on hand for this project, but they can use anything they can get their hands on. (Well, except for a wall and paint.)
7. Show them how to put the camera on a tripod and explain how to control lighting, turn flash off, turn off auto zoom, etc. Conscious, consistent lighting is essential.
8. Have them do a short test of at least 24 photos that they bring into the video editing software so they can get a basic understanding of how this works if they are taking the photos correctly.
9. Let 'em at it!

I've done this with both middle and high school students with great success. Everyone seems to get into it. One of my students this year even has a stop-motion app for his cell phone camera that has, for example, the onion-skin effect where there is a faint image of the position you just had to allow you to reposition correctly for the next shot.

Taking Digital Art to the Next Level

Digital Art Revolution, by Scott Ligon (Watson-Guptill) is a very enjoyable and inspiring book of  creative digital art ideas, theory  and instructions. The intro chapter, "Welcome to the Revolution" makes it clear that it is written with an artist's perspective, not that of a technician who has found some neat tricks, and the chapter about "Finding Your Own Voice" has many great ideas to include in discussions of problem solving and creative thinking. It covers both compositing and painting techniques with examples from a wide variety of digital artists, covering many styles, making this real "eye candy".

It's Complicated: The American Teenager

Photojournalist Robin Bowman has a wonderful website with samples from her book, Its Complicated: The American Teenager. Select "Teenagers" from the menu and click on each photo. Look for the small +  symbol to make the text of the interview with each subject appear. She says that her project "underscores the similarity and diversity that make up this country and this generation, and reminds all of us that people are not necessarily who they appear to be." Not only does she give presentations, she also runs workshops to promote tolerance and social awareness for students and teachers. Her website is also a great example of how photographers promote their work and find audiences and venues for exhibits.