Photoshop and Animoto

One of my first camps this summer was the digital art camp. This is the second year having this camp and it is one of my favorites. The kids get to do things that are completely new.

One of my favorite projects was inspired by Video Art in Photoshop and Video Art and Photoshop for Kids by Nicole Dalesio. She is another great educator and blogger. She has some fun projects using video and Photoshop that are very easy to follow.

For one of the projects the kids picked a theme that would be easy to film short clips. For this project the them was “kids at play”. The kids went out in groups and picked something to play on in the playground. I showed them how to film at different angles to get more interesting compositions. It was important that they keep the videos short.

 

Then, I taught them how to edit the length of their clips and apply adjustment layers to their videos using Photoshop.

Once all the videos were complete, I finished the project by uploading the video files to Animoto. Here is the final result.

Check out Nicole Dalesio’s website to see how to apply the filters to video in Photoshop.

Bowl of Fruit

This project was done during the first week of art camp for k-2nd graders. The focus of the drawing was how overlapping objects can create a sense of space and how to layer the oil pastel colors to add shadow.

1. Start by drawing an oval for the opening of the bowl. Then a half circle for the front of the bowl.
2. Draw the fruit. I talked about drawing the fruit closest first, then draw the fruit behind it. Usually the younger kids want to draw the whole fruit so I made sure to point out to the kids that you would not see the bottom of the fruit because of them overlapping.
3. Draw the horizon line behind the fruit to represent the table and the wall. Remind kids to be careful not to draw through the bowl and fruit.
4. Fill the shapes with oil pastel.
5. Shadows. I made sure the kids study where the shadows are on the fruit and on the table and how to layer the shadow color over the original pastel color. The last tip I gave them is that a shadow is the shade of the color that it is casting on. Meaning if the apple is a light green, the shadow is a darker green.