Digital Art

By Julian Pratt

One of the aspects of Eighth Grade art this year includes Digital Art. We started off the year, talking about digital photography. We looked at several different photos and had a discussion about what we liked or didn’t like about the photos. We also talked about the composition of the photo, subject, color and lighting. We then went outside to take some photos of our own. We were given directions to take pictures of various things we saw around the city. For example, pictures that captured shadows, textures on buildings, or interesting angles.
After we took our photos we then downloaded them on to the computers. We transferred the photos into Photoshop were we learned about color adjustments and cropping. For example, with one of the photos I took, of an old broken down door, I changed the colors so that the photo was more vibrant and had more depth. Some other things that we have learned about Photoshop so far were how to use filters for effects. Some of the effects you can achieve are distorting, twisting and combining images. Taking photos out in the city for a class was something I never did before and really enjoyed. I also had never been able to use Photoshop before without being completely overwhelmed by all it’s “gadgets. Now I understand more about Photoshop and feel comfortable using this program to enhance or create art.

In seventh grade we are learning about Colonial Times. Currently, in art we are working on a project that incorporates silhouettes. A silhouette, in this case can be described as the shadow cast by your profile. They are based off of a style created in Colonial times. Since they did not have cameras, as we do now, one way to have a portrait of yourself would be a silhouette. The process we took in making our silhouettes was to have every student stand by a wall in a dark hallway, A light was projected on the person, then the shadow of the person cast on the wall was traced. Later we cut out the profiles and had the first part of our silhouette project! We then thought about how we were going to design a boarder for our silhouettes. We made our boarder by thinking about different types of lines. We came up with symbols based on what different activities we enjoy and different aspects of our personalities, and incorporated them into our borders. We later painted the boarders, glued the silhouettes and then, what do you know? You have yourself a silhouette!