How was your semester?

TPTE 486 has been a wild ride. Throughout this semester I've discovered new tools and software that will aide me in future expeditions into the technological wild, while developing pre-existing knowledge and skills along the way. I feel that this class content has prepared me for organizing thoughts and information as well as creating a comprehensive, professional portfolio for future employers to oogle at. I enjoyed the projects, and oddly enough, kind of enjoyed blogging about them, too.

Here are some highlights from my favorites:

Here's one of my favorite photos from the digital scavenger hunt project. It's an "edge".

This artist's work was found at http://www.thefeejeemermaid.com/ as part of the photo collection assignment. Needless to say, his sculptures and process are worth a second look. Go for it, you know you're curious.

This is Tormented Bull by Hans Hoffman. Pretty cool painting incorporated into my Abstract Expressionism INSPIRATION project.

Alberto Giacometti. Nuff said.

All in all, this class was a lot of fun and super helpful in enhancing our technological repretoire in an advancingly technological world. I hope that I will be able to apply the skills I have acquired in my future art classroom.

thank you, and goodnight.

-BD

Lucy in the SKYPE with diamonds...

I am extremely wary of new-fangled social interface technologies like Twitter and Skype, but recently had an awesome experience that allowed for a tad bit of reform on my technological paranoia.

Our senior drawing class had originally arranged a meeting back in September to meet and listen to a visiting artist, Julia Jacquette. Her lecture and our meeting was cancelled as was her flight to Knoxville due to inclement weather. Our professor, Marcia Goldenstein, decided to schedule a Skype session with Julia to make up for our lack of interaction.

I wasn't thrilled.

Not that I didn't want to meet and greet with Julia, I just wasn't interested in Skype and the inevitable video/sound lag times and the awkwardness of speaking to a computer screen that it would most likely bring with it.

I was pleasantly mistaken.

Crowded into a dark conference room in the Art & Architecture building with a digital projector displaying "Julia Jacquette" on the blank white wall, our class of 13 or so Drawing majors waited anxiously for the strange encounter to begin. Marcia called Julia on her cell phone, acknowledged that we were ready to begin, and launched the Skype session on her laptop.

Suddenly the room fell hushed and the smiling New York artist popped into view on Marcia's computer screen. She spoke "Hi Everyone!" and was easily decipherable through the speakers connected to the laptop. There was no lag time. There was no horrible video resolution. Eventually, there was no awkwardness.

The computer's web cam from which Julia was able to see us through was aimed at the projector wall, and after a brief introduction, she began a lecture about herself and her artworks. During the short pauses in her speech, Marcia advanced the slide show of images that Julia had emailed her and she described to us her process, inspiration, influences, and motivation behind each artwork displayed on the wall. It was basically like a traditional artist lecture that one could attend in room AA109 on any given Thursday night, only we weren't in a crowded lecture hall wishing we were at home watching "The Office" on NBC. We were seated comfortably among a few peers, listening to the artist speak and asking her questions. The potential awkwardness of shouting inquiries in a crowded room was eliminated by this warm, intimate conversation with an amazing artist living hundreds of miles away.

Skype is my new best friend.

It's free for download at the main webpage, and if you want to upgrade to get more features than just the video calls you can sign up for monthly payments.

This experience opened my eyes to the potential that Skype introduces in an art classroom. Instead of doing a PowerPoint presentation about an artist and researching hours of information to be able to convey their work and processes to my students, I can simply contact an artist by email and attempt to arrange a Skype session. Many artists like Julia Jacquette have their own websites and are surprisingly eager to share their work with students. A lecture from me about an artist's work is transformed into an interactive art lesson with a practicing artist that students can actually ask questions and get feedback and advice from in real time.

Exciting stuff.

hmm...it's a little GIMPy...

So for anyone out there that is not particularly familiar with photo editing software, the task of cropping, re-sizing, changing the brightness/contrast/hue/saturation of an image can be a little daunting. I however, am fully trained in the art of Photoshop and can edit the crap out of an image.

for those who can't, or don't own/can't afford Adobe Photoshop, there's GIMP.

GIMP is free software that you can download from the designer's website.

This program is not only FREE but it also has a pretty simple user interface that is practically a blend of Photoshop and Microsoft Paint. Lots of the major tools and functions of Photoshop are integrated into this knock-off version, allowing users to do the simple crop/rotate/re-size/color correction tasks, as well as some more advanced functions like adding text and drawing on/around images.

For a Photoshop veteran like myself, GIMP is familiar enough that it is confusing at first, because the layout and controls are a little off kilter from the standard Photoshop setup. Tool icons and keyboard shortcuts are different, and the names of tools/functions differ as well, causing a few mix-ups and increasing the average time spent working on images. That said, GIMP offers a nice selection of image editing options that, for FREE, is well worth it.

Anyone unfamiliar with working in GIMP can search YouTube for "GIMP tutorial" and get a wide range of video tutorials to aid them in various tasks.

So I say to any teacher-wannabe that needs to edit some photos: "Get your GIMP on!"

Images for Education

One big issue facing art programs in K-12 schools is censorship and content in regards to integrating technology into the classrooms. I recall that when I was taking art in highschool, we always had trouble searching for images to use for reference in our art projects. While copyright is an underlying issue, the biggest hindrance was the amount of content blocked on the school computers.

For instance:

A student is doing a surrealism piece and has to incorporate three elements that do not ordinarily go together and has to make them work together compositionally. The student chooses a ferrari, great white shark, and a coconut. In order for the student to accurately depict each of these things in their work, they must have reference photos to work from. The student attempts to do a Google Image search. Google Images is blocked by the school's administrative server. The student tries to go to Photostock or Corbis images to find their reference images. No luck there either. This student is stuck, having to use more ordinary objects that they can observe physically in their project, therefore limiting the creativity of the work and the satisfaction of the student and the teacher.

To help remedy this problem, many people have given their time and money to create web resources with FREE IMAGES...that's right I'll say it again: FREE IMAGES for educational use. These sites collect images from photographers and other users who donate pictures to the sites, allowing teachers and students to access the images for educational purposes for free. Some restrictions apply depending on the author of the work; some photographers would like their name or personal website referenced somewhere with the finished piece to get recognition for the image, but this is way better than paying for images or continually running into roadblocks from the administrative powers.

Here are a few that I have found:

http://www.photos8.com/

http://www.pics4learning.com/

http://www.stockvault.net/

http://www.freefoto.com/ - this one has lots of pop-ups, be aware.

commons.wikimedia.org

These are just a few, I'm sure you could find others that would work just as well.

Poke-Preview

Aside from Facebook, I've been wanting to chronicle some of the work I've been doing in my senior drawing class this semester. This post will be for the images and information about the collective art show titled "Shoot! It Was So Close, Too!" that contains the work of Jake Cruze, Zach Wooliver, and myself. The show is based on the ficticious world of "Pokemon", a once popular phenomena in television, video games, trading cards, manga, and other assorted outlets back in the mid 90's. Each artist has created a character and embellished their resume and personality to fit into the Pokemon world. We represent a Pokemon collector, professor, and trainer. Each of our works details a different perspective on the subject matter.

This has absolutely been the most fun I've had creating art since I started college.



Reginald "Arcanine" Weezington III

(Brandon Daniel)

Pokemon Collector





# 003 Venusaur
Charcoal on Newsprint



# 006 Charizard
Charcoal on Newsprint



# 009 Blastoise
Charcoal on Newsprint

# 011 Metapod
Papier Mache, Acrylic, and Resin

# 092 Gastly
Watercolor and Ink on paper

#093 Haunter
Watercolor and Ink on paper

#094 Gengar
Watercolor and Ink on paper

# 129 Magikarp
Watercolor and Ink on paper

For more of my work and work/characters of the Zach and Jake, be sure to come out to our show on

July 1st, 2011 from 6:00-9:00. It will be at 1010 Gallery, 113 S.Gay Street.

Interactive Worksheets

Ever wondered how people make interactive quizzes and worksheets for others to fill out tab by tab on the computer and get immediate results on their progress? Me too.

Little did I know, but Microsoft Excel has the capability to create just such a document! I always considered Excel to be completely useless to me, because I was never interested in creating a spreadsheet or bar graph or any of that lame stuff. This is actually useful though, and could be integrated into any classroom where students may have computer access. I most likely wouldn't use it during my art classes, but I'd like to have a class website to post images of student work and answer questions outside of class time, so the option to have study worksheets on terminology and definitions could definitely be integrated.

Here is an image of my Principles of Design worksheet:

As you can see I've provided a little information in the blanks already. There is a space where students can add their name and the date, then just hit Enter or Tab and automatically start answering questions. There is a word bank and image representing radial symmetry. As shown in the picture, when students answer a question correctly the form reflects the fact with "Correct!" and awards the student 10 points. If a question is answered incorrectly they receive 0 points and the message "Try Again". A cumulative total at the bottom shows how many points the student has at the moment, with the maximum being of course 100.

This type of interactive spreadsheet layout is super helpful and allows students to study for quizzes and tests by granting them the ability to go back and re-do questions they missed. The only downside I found with the activity is that the answers are case-sensitive and basically have to be EXACTLY like the answer provided in the making of the form. Other than that this is a very useful resource that I might actually use in the future!

Digital Story

One of our recent assignments was to create a digital story using pictures, sound, and motion to convey the story in a slide show-type presentation.

I chose to do a visual representation of a poem - The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot.
The Hollow Men was written in 1925 by Eliot and poetically conveys feelings about the first World War and the nature of humankind in general. I chose to illustrate the poem with images of artworks by Alberto Giacometti and Henry Moore, as well as a couple drawings I did myself. Moore and Giacometti were contemporaries with Eliot, and their work has been put into context alongside The Hollow Men in many different analyses. This project was fun to work on and I really enjoyed the sound editing mostly. I am interested in recording/editing video and sound, so assignments like this are a pleasure. I am familiar with Adobe programs and commonly use Photoshop and Illustrator to create and edit images, Audition to fix sound, and After Effects to work with video and other time-based projects.

Without any further ado, here is my digital story:

Just in case you haven't read the poem or if it's been a while since you have, here it is as well:

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us --if at all --not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

II

Eyes i dare not meet in dreams

In death's dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind's singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death's dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer --

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death's other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

in this valley of dying stars

in this hollow valley

this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death's twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

                                 For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

                   Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

                              For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

if you made it all the way to the bottom here, congratulations for sticking with it. And thank you.