The following is an article that I wrote in March for
inclusion in a primary teacher's art and craft magazine
called 'Start'
I teach art and I have
gradually specialised in working with digital media. I am
building up a repertoire of ideas for activities involving
a potent mix of traditional and new media. The intention of
this article is to share some of this through a snapshot of
the projects of this academic year to date.
I take a small group of enthusiastic juniors for a weekly
after school activity. My plan was to mix digital media
with drawing, painting, and other traditional media. The
very first lesson involved taking a self portrait using the
computer’s build in camera. In my lesson plan this was to
take a couple of minutes at the start of the lesson but I
lost the rest of the session to hilarity, my plan falling
apart as the pupils played with the digital effects that
squeezed and distorted their images like a hall of mirrors.
Such is the power of digital media. Frustrating as
computers can be, they can also be captivating. Children
love to see themselves on screen, and using computers can
add magic to lessons.
We took year 7 on a trip to the Eden project so a jungle
theme seemed fitting. Being the Autumn term there were lots
of colourful leaves to be collected and scanned. The
scanned leaves were then assembled into jungle pictures
using a lot of copy, paste and transform in Adobe Photoshop
using the paintings of Henri Rousseau as inspiration. The
jungles were then populated with crazy animals, created by
finding images on Google, and combining the top half of one
creature with the bottom half of another.
The theme for year 8 was Myths and Legends. In the initial
discussion about the project ahead the class chose to do an
animation based on a Greek myth. Dividing the class into
smaller groups to create each chapter or scene, silhouette
puppets were cut from black card, with limbs articulated
using split pins. The action was filmed on digital movie
cameras connected to Macintosh laptops running a wonderful
stop frame animation program called icananimate. As the
project progressed some of the students worked on titles,
some on sound effects, others on the musical soundtrack, a
script and narration. As homework for each session I set a
little research project. In this case it was obvious to
look at the work of great animators such as Lotte Reiniger
and Oliver Postgate.
In the Indian summer at the start of the term worked
outside with year 9 students. Working in group, each group
armed with a simple digital camera and a tripod, they
created stop frame motion using themselves as the subjects.
For inspiration we looked at the classic Canadian animator
Norman Mclaren, but there is a great deal of this type of
animation to be found on YouTube at present too. In one of
the best of these animations the students actually used
their shoes rather than themselves, creating a tour of the
school. Stop frame animation does not need special
equipment. The simplest of digital camera linked to any
movie making software that will import still images and
make quite sophisticated animations. Two other movies from
this session were the girls who made themselves disappear
in quick succession behind the thinnest of trees, and a
group who created a sort of ballet or synchronised swimming
on the grass. The technique is called pixillation, and can
produce effects with the slapstick qualities of early
comics masters such as Buster Keaton, or the mad antics of
The Goodies and the mad professor from ‘Vision on’
Later in the term students worked in groups to create a two
minute public service advertisement on an antismoking
theme, the outline plans of which we entered in a Channel 4
competition called ‘Breath’. The films were shot around
school, one involving some great acting by a passing
teacher! Students were able to take roles within the group,
behind the camera or in front, creating sound tracks and
titles using software such as Apple’s Garage Band and
iMovie.
In year 10 small groups and individuals continued to
experiment with animation, over a longer period and with
greater sophistication. One student recreated a still life
painting using real objects which he then animated. The
original painting cross dissoled into the animated version.
A year 11 student has become very proficient in the use of
Flash, and has programmed some fantastic interactive works;
screens of coloured lines reminiscent of Bridget Riley or
Mark Rothko that react to the movement of the mouse,
changing colour or moving. A second students has become
fascinated with clocks, creating a number of his own
clocks, using Flash as the engine to make his digital works
of art tell accurate time. A third student is passionate
about the whole punk rock genre. He has taken photos of his
punk rock peers and is using Photoshop to create moody
images with altered levels of colour and contrast. To add
spice to a year 10 visit to a gallery we asked students to
talk about paintings in the exhibition from the point of
view of the painting’s subject. Back in school we combined
the sound track with a reproduction of the work so the
subject of the painting appears to talk about themselves.
This was done with a wonderful bit of software called Crazy
Talk. I used this software to experiment with some self
portraits that another group had produced, in effect
getting the drawing to evaluate itself.
At 6th form level I have several students experimenting
with photography in different ways. One is creating
stunning images using coloured dyes, water, mirrors,
distorting lenses and digital distortions in Photoshop.
Another is very keen on the work of photographers such as
Henri Cartier Bresson and Robert Doisneau. He has persuaded
his parents to take him on a trip to Paris this Easter so
that he can produce images of Parisian cafe life for his A
level examination. A number of these senior students are
creating websites to publish their work, with integrated
blogs to explain the processes they use and the influences
on their work; all the traditional sketchbook work
translated into digital format. Other students have
experimented with scanning and self portraiture, and are
currently in the process of creating photographic screen
prints from their digital creations.
A very speedy snapshot of two terms of work, and I have not
touched on the many technical and other issues that working
with digital media generates. The computers and software
are expensive and prone to error, much of the work is done
in groups rather than individually, and often these groups
need to be out of the classroom, in charge of expensive
equipment. When students use images found on Google, there
are copyright issues, and issues of child protection when
they put their work back onto the web. Sites like Bebo,
Facebook and Youtube have great potential, fraught with
issues for teachers and teaching in this digital age. But I
will finish were I started. Despite many challenges my
experience of experimenting with digital media in the art
room is generally motivated students being creative, having
fun, coming to lessons with enthusiasm, working at home,
sharing their experiences with me, all the things that
excite me and keep me motivated as a teacher. I’m
hooked.