Digital Drawing with 8th grade: Night sky

My 8th grade has had me for 2 years now, so they know a little bit about the digital rules and how to make new designs, but digital drawing still very foreign to them.

So to get them to draw something that is new and exciting that they can be proud of with little to know experience, this is a great lesson. I also like this lesson because, even though it is a simple lesson, there is no tracing in it, so the product they have at the end in an all original piece they created. 

The resources I use were found from Pinterest, but I added the link, if you want to find more where they came from.

https://enijoi.deviantart.com/art/Starry-Sky-Tutorial-463440391

https://megatruh.deviantart.com/art/night-sky-tutorial-332989256

I used a combination of both for this lesson. 

We worked through this lesson all together. I would teach a step ad wait for 90% to get through that step and then move on, and while I waited for everyone to get that done I would help the stragglers catch up. 

Here are some of the great student examples.

Second Semester First photo Assignment: Part 1

This assignment was done in Photoshop and it focused on Hard and Soft Editing. 

I don't really know if the terms Hard and Soft editing are a thing, but I needed a way to distinguish between the two for my new Photoshoppers. Photoshop is becoming synonymous with memes, which are crazy wild edits, that if we are being honest have gotten a little out of control. But photoshop can also be used for subtle editing, where it still looks clean and realistic.

Soft editing- light editing. This is only to improve the color, sharpen your image, fix the contrast, and so on.... 

Hard editing- Go nuts. Anything you can do in photoshop without leaving gaping white holes in your images will fly. In this assignment, however, I do encourage them to see what they can do their picture only using the the tools available in the program. Just so they can become more familiar with where things are. 

For our first lesson, where we edit photos, the students have taken themselves, we use both Lightroom and PhotoShop. This post is all about PhotoShop, the next one will be about our light room portion. 

To go get them taking pictures with a purpose I gave them a prompt list. They did not need to use these for the assignment, but when they have them, then we have a better chance of a better variety of picture getting taken. 

Picture Scavenger Hunt:

take a picture of ...

only a part of someones face

with no ground in it 

of a tree

hands in the front

holding the camera upside down

while lying on your back

someone jumping

the floor.... but make it look like the ceiling 

through a window

a shadow 

the back of someones head

shallow focus

where someone is mad 

through something

someone walking

someone laughing

Then we go into photoshop. 

Their assignment is to complete 6 edits. 

3 soft edits 

3 hard edits 

These are examples of Soft edits: These were just edited to change the colors, the bright or sharpen, but nothing drastic was done to them, and minimal filter use was applied. 

These are "Hard Edits". In these edits kids were pretty much told to get photoshop out of their system. Go nuts. Edit till you are blue in the face. Students who have never used photoshop before, really need this time to play. Other wise you will see this repressed photoshop

Filling Time, and Engaging Creativity in Digital Drawing and Painting

One problem that project based lessons alway have, are early finishers. These may be students who chose and easier concept, or just students who are rock stars and did everything at light speed.

How do you fill the time for your speed racers?

Well in Digital Drawing and Painting. I had that problem during the first quarter. So I decided to open up a Personal project. After student were done they had all semester to work on an on going art piece of their choosing. A lot of students took on a more intense project and spent all semester perfecting their work until the end when it was due. Other took a different approach, they would use this to try new things of test out techniques. I was so impressed with the variety of work I got from this project.

The Assignment: (Given at the beginning of the quarter)
- Create a digital work of art of anything you are interested in.
- Focus on a style of subject you have been curious about, that you don't think we will cover or not cover enough.
- Budget your time throughout the quarter to finish it by the end.
- If students are using all available time on their other assignments they are exempt from this project.
- At the end, have critique where students talk about their journey through this assignment.

I hope you enjoy some of the results of the personal project examples

This student wanted try out a style he has seen another illustrator do.


This student decided to try a design technique. 
This student wanted to explore the inking capabilities.

This student Decided to try drawing on the iPads to see what digital abilities they could do.



Space Obama