Hard Editing Vs. Soft Editing

When I started the first photo assignment I noticed students struggled with knowing when the editing went too far. There is a time and place for both styles, but I did require all photos to be at least soft edited. 

So in this assignment, practice finding that line and when and where is the time to cross it my more intense edits for your pictures. 

We start will a lesson where we talk about the "looks" soft editing VS. Har editing. As a general rule I say soft editing a person should think, "Wow look at that great picture." in Hard editing a person look at the image and say, "Wow, look at the editing in the picture." In hard edits Photo shopping become the star of the show. 

Assignment:

2 different photos of still life top shots 
2 Different photos of Controlled light 
2 different photos of foreground disrupted photos 
2 Black and White Photos (both just in black and white no hard editing required)

Expectations:
all photos must be edited
all photos must be original
all photos must be take for this project (do not turn in a old photo you like from a year ago)
all photos must be exported as jpgs (no screenshots or photos of your screen)
all photos must show intentionality and purpose

Examples of student work from this year.

Soft Edits:

Hard Edits:

My recent AP Hack

As you may or may not know AP made some big changes to the Portfolio requirements before the pandemic. I went to the AP training and with respect to the lovely instructors, it was not informative. 

Their Goal: Make the portfolio more inquiry-based. Make the student focus on an essential question, that culminates in a themed portfolio. They want to focus on the synthesis of materials, revision, research, and experimentation. 

With that being said one of the big things they wanted to see was evidence of research and sketches. As a digital art teacher, My students are not usually making large amounts of sketches. So what I have been doing for research and revision is using Canva. 

Canva for research:

 

Students can share their inspiration, state a color palette, show sketches, show past work and demonstrate revisions. it creates a really easy and aesthetically pleasing way of doing research.

This also will work for tradition art classes. Students can upload work in progress inspiration and revision. I found last year that the students that added revision and sketches in a collage format did better on their portfolio by an entire score level. 

Elements of Design and Teaching Photoshop to beginners.

 At the beginning of Digital Design, I try to get my students into Photoshop while also building a portfolio. So I do the elements unit. I created 4 easy elements designs while also teaching basic techniques essential in PhotoShop and then we ended with an illustrator lesson. 

Here is my PowerPoint that I slowly go through before each new Element:

https://www.canva.com/design/DAFs1QSn0rw/RM_DqW8WxmEmHEymd7DaMA/view?utm_content=DAFs1QSn0rw&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor

We created each of these over a few weeks, we did not critique them individually, but instead once everything was finished we used these projects to act as the building blocks for their portfolio website. (Spoilers we using blogging websites to let them document their work and progress)

I hope you enjoy our lessons.

Photoshop tutorial for Color:

Student Example: 

Pixlr Tutorial For Shape and Space: It is not in Photoshop but the concept is the same. Also, I do like to diversify the program students are getting everyone in a while, so they have other alternatives if they are sick or we have to distance learning. 

Student examples:

Illustrator tutorial for Form:

Student Examples:

Photoshop Tutorial for Line:

Student examples for line:

The student did a great job and I was super impressed with the results of their very first project. 

How I teach digital drawing landscapes (Part 1)

  Landscapes are a huge lesson, and you can literally spend your entire career as an artist focusing on landscapes, in fact, there are entire art periods just focused on Landscapes... So how do you teach a group of new artists to draw a giant art style while also learning how to use digital drawing for the first time?

Well, I don't have the perfect answer but after teaching this class for 6 years, I have finally found a formula that has garnered the most successful results. 

We start with a mini-lesson. Here is the video of the tutorial. This minimalist landscape project is nice for two reasons: it gets kids to think in terms of aerial and 1-point perspective, while also completing an "easy win" project. If the student follows those directions, the project looks great. And that gives them a confidence boost to want to take on the next steps. 

This video is for pixlr which is a browser-based program so your students can even do this on a Chromebook.

Here are a few examples of student work.

Low Poly digital Mosaic project

Every year my lessons change drastically. I actually have joked that in my 8 years of teaching, I have never taught that same intro project to my second semester twice. But that is not the case for the Low poly project. 

This project is my own spin on a popular design trend. I treat my lesson more like a digital mosaic, so students can choose their own shapes and styles with their designs. 

This is some of the featured work from this year.