Posts
1.31.2009
One of the biggest fans of the Revolution* emailed us a heads up that Dennis Dutton (see previous post) was recently on the Colbert Show to talk about his book. I haven't read it either - but Colbert has a funny take on Dutton's thesis:
*my father.
1.30.2009
Has anyone read this book, the art instinct? I wonder if it's any good. Denis Dutton bridges a link between art and humanity's biological (evolutionary) desire to create. Interesting, would love to know if anyone would recommend it.
-cr
1.29.2009
First of all, I want to give a warm welcome to Bethany- the newest member of the Carrot Revolution family. By way of introduction, read her post below and check our her class blog here (especially worth watching is this video she made in which she explains her pedagogy). Welcome Bethany!
1.28.2009
Hello Gentle Readers,
Although not entirely new to the art scene, nor the teaching scene, I am new to the combination. My name is Bethany Waggoner and I am currently student teaching in high school art in Anchorage, Alaska. Most of my prior teaching experience involved teaching ESL to foreigners, and my art experience involved watercolors. This year I am learning how to teach all sorts of art to high schoolers. My mentor teacher and I teach an art curriculum that covers it all – drawing, painting, printmaking, ceramics, and metalwork. Some of it I have little to no experience in (metalwork?) but I’m having fun learning! How great to realize that my art degree wasn’t useless after all, and that somehow I’m going to end up having one of the most fun jobs in the world! I am working hard though, I’m in a one year MAT program where I student teach through the whole year while taking classes. This year is extremely busy for me, but I am thankful for my youthful energy and passion that make this craziness possible. I’m also thankful to Mr. Gran for allowing me to contribute to this awesome site. Good to meet you all.
1.21.2009
Attention digital illustrators and participants in the Rotoball project! Bob Flynn has a great explanation of how to 'ink' using Adobe Flash (I still have a hard time writing 'Adobe' Flash, it just doesn't seem right- like trying to say "Honda SUV" - you know it exists, but it shouldn't). This is a great explanation of how to get the most out of the brush tool, especially if you have a wacom tablet- and I've never really thought of using Flash for still work before. When it comes down to it, its a much easier and intuitive vector program to use than illustrator (or the pen tool in Photoshop). Note that there are some good tips for those of us who use it for creating motion graphics as well.
For those of you in the New York area, you probably know about Materials for the Arts. If not, it's worth a visit. It's a resource center for art teachers/artists who are willing to use materials given to this non-profit by companies for redistribution.
If you're not from the NY area, maybe this organization could help you. It's called Donors Choose. Teachers ask, donors choose, students learn is the motto. Not sure it's that easy, but I get the point. Heard good things about this program, though haven't tried it myself. But the idea of allowing anyone to help a teacher overcome financial and material constraints in the classroom is brilliant.
-cr
1.20.2009
Looking for another way to show your enthusiasm for the new prez? Why not Obamicon yourself? What fun! You can even have the kids do it- hey, he's all our president now, so its not partisan anymore! Yipee!
have ever actually looked at art school mission statements?? who has, right? but as i was writing college recs recently for my students (mostly going to U.S. schools), i started wondering about how these mission statements might differ from each other when put side-by-side. so here's a sampling of just a few (some are only portions of a larger mission). i've included the college links too. tell me what you think of them... do they ring true to what you've heard or experienced?
CCA educates students to shape culture through the practice and critical study of the arts. The college prepares its students for lifelong creative work and service to their communities through a curriculum in fine art, architecture, design, and writing.
CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS
The Savannah College of Art and Design exists to prepare talented students for professional careers, emphasizing learning through individual attention in a positively oriented university environment.
SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART
Otis prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich our world through their creativity, their skill, and their vision.
OTIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN
To provide excellence in the delivery of a global education in visual, design, media, and related arts, with attendant studies in the history and theory of those disciplines set within a broad-based humanistic curriculum in the liberal arts and sciences. To provide instruction for this education in a range of formats: written, spoken, media, and exhibition-based.
SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
As practicing visual artists, we, the faculty of the Department of Art Practice hold as our principal goal the representation and analysis of human experiences through creative research in visual art.
BERKELEY
The mission of Pratt Institute is to educate artists and creative professionals to be responsible contributors to society. Pratt seeks to instill in all graduates aesthetic judgment, professional knowledge, collaborative skills, and technical expertise.
PRATT INSTITUTE
The mission of the Rhode Island School of Design, through its college and museum, is to educate its students and the public in the creation and appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to make lasting contributions to a global society through critical thinking, scholarship and innovation.
RISD
Parsons focuses on creating engaged citizens and outstanding artists, designers, scholars and business leaders through a design-based professional and liberal education.
PARSONS
-cr
1.19.2009
While working with some of my students today on their narrative project idea, I was reminded of this Calvin and Hobbes parody from a few years ago.
I should clarify: this was not inspired by the interaction with the students- rather their ideas about a short story about drugs stifling creativity.
Here is the second teaser trailer for the Shanghai Student Film Festival. This inspirational piece was created in Livetype by my colleague Jonathan Chambers:
Find more videos like this on SAS Professional Development Net
Festival season is upon us, get out your camera and get ready for your close-up.
Waltz with Bashir seems like a stunning animation film, I'm looking forward to seeing it. and wow is it timely. this is supposed to be one of the best portrayals of the ongoing israeli-palestinian conflict thru the eyes of one soldier's personal story.
-cr
1.18.2009
Just one more Light Painting resource. A project that worked great in our class!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
1.17.2009
I can't work completely out of my imagination. I must put my foot in a bit of truth; and then I can fly free.
1.15.2009
Once you're bored with Polardroiding your pictures, you can go to TiltShiftMaker.com and make instant Tilt-Shift pictures. The controls are somewhat limited, so you might be better off following one of the many other tutorials to be found - but if you need a quick fix for your photo manipulation obsession, this will take you just a few moments of your time.
If you're not familiar with tilt-shifting, its the process of simulating a miniaturized reality by faking the depth of field of a photograph, and often over-saturating the colors.
The picture above is a tilt-shifted "Radioactive Cats" by Sandy Skoglund. It really changes the dynamic of the original: 
1.14.2009
So, apparently Quincy Jones made a statement that the first thing he'll say to President Obama when he sees him, is that there needs to be a Secretary of the Arts position in his administration. Unfortunately, the US is sadly behind other countries that already have cabinet-level cultural and arts leaders. Art Teacher Donna Cummins brought this online petition to support Jones' idea back to my attention. To be honest, I'm a little skeptical of online petitions- I'm not sure what they amount to. However, I think there's a good argument for signing it:
(a) it couldn't hurt.
(b) its currently the most signed petition on petitiononline.com, so it already has a lot of momentum.
(c) the Obama administration has made it clear that it values the new form of interactive civic participation that the internet fosters. If any administration would respond to an online petition, its this one.
Thanks Donna!
1.12.2009
Here's another idea generator- this one's not only got a slick interface, but you can download a widget for your mac dashboard and an application for your iphone, or itouch.
Edit: I've used this successfully with two of my classes- its a great idea generator- be warned though, there are a few words that pop up that aren't exactly school-appropriate. My high school kids can laugh it off, but I'd worry about the word "erotic" popping up in an elementary school classroom.
1.06.2009
My foundations art students are all worried today because they've got their 'midterm exam' on friday and their mean nasty terrible teacher won't even tell them what's on it. We'll keep 'em guessing I say - they're worried about what they'll need to know, but I'm just looking to challenge them creatively. We've spent so much of this last semester on observational drawing and we need to just have a day to kick start the imagination. So our midterm will be for them to design their own robot in a lesson styled after Joe Alterio's Robots and Monsters project.
Rather than having outsiders submit three words to describe their robots, I've found this Random Word Generator . Bookmark this one, its a pretty useful tool for idea generation.
Resouce for photography students and teachers.
Photography of a found alphabet
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
When a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it. The ear goes more toward the within, the eye toward the outer.
-Robert Bresson, Notes on Sound
In the past years of teaching video, I haven't paid enough attention to sound- and if Bresson is to be believed, that's a big mistake. As I teach my video class this year concurrently with IB Film, I'm dotting my t's and crossing my i's about covering all our cinematic bases. Luckily for me, there are a ton of good resources to be found on Filmsound.org. I thought I'd share them with you.
Edited excerpts from Kerner, Marvin M: The Art of the Sound Effects Editor (1989), p 11- 15
Foley artists create sounds for films using source material that you might not expect. There are some fun examples listed on this page in which foley artists share their secrets.
The sound of a dog walking on a hard surface is made with Lee Press-On- Nails glued onto gloves? The size of the dog determines which thickness of nails to use.
Here's an activity which could form the basis of a foley lesson:
Experiment with each of the above items to create different noises. Try creating new sounds by manipulating two or more items in combination or changing the environment you are in. Feel free to cut things apart, glue them together, or do whatever else inspires you.
Here are some foley artists at work on Jurassic Park:
1.01.2009
I'd love to get an iPhone, but you still need to hack it to get it to work in China, and I have no desire to pay 70 clams a month for the AT&T service that I can't even use. So I got the next best thing, the iTouch (which is on sale at Costco for a few dollars under the advertised price and it also comes with a two year warranty which costs extra at the apple store- just FYI).
I've spent some time over the last few days scouring the internet for some good art and education related applications. Here's what I've got so far:
Random Pose: This website of anatomically correct models mentioned here before now has its own iApplication. This is terrific for doing a little sketching as it updates with a new pose whenever you connect.
Remote Pad: Turn your iPhone / iTouch into a remote for your computer and control the mouse from a distance. This sounds like a nice teaching tool.
Magic iBall: Its the Magic 8 Ball in the 21st century. Not really an education app, but a useful tool for giving a student an indirect answer when they ask how they've done on a project you haven't graded yet.
Oh come on, that would be funny.
Art Lite: Keep some examples of the masters in your pocket. There are slideshows of Van Gogh, Picasso, Michaelangelo, DaVinci and a few others. There are also some games and quizzes. Not quite a necessity for your app lineup, but potentially useful if you need to pull out a copy of the Mona Lisa to examine on short notice.
Brushes: I actually didn't download any painting programs because I doubted the usefulness of any drawing app that relied on dragging my clumsy fingers across a small two inch screen. However, I've just stumbled across this post on Drawn about Disney artist Stef Kardos' iphone painting flickr set. Consider me converted. Here's an example:
Movie Maker: If I had an iPhone, I'd give this app a try- using the still camera on the iphone you can easily create stop motion videos. Similarly, Juxtaposer looks like a fun way to play around with your photos, although I'd probably opt for just uploading my photos to a computer and using photoshop.
Lie Detector Advanced: So the goldfish ate your homework sketches? Would you care to put that to the test?
Any suggestions for other apps that I'm missing or forgetting?
