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Much earlier in the school year 5th graders created an additive and subtractive clay masks
One silly day, I took out all my art room props, stuffed animal, and wings and had them pose before our green screen to become the monster body that matched their clay mask. Well, I thought we could work on putting this together on iPads during their rotation, but the animation idea took our entire time. But luckily our art room now has iPads! 

Here is how we layer the pieces together:
1. Choose a background (save to photos)
2. Find your monster pose (save to photos)
3. Find your mask (save to photos)

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Click image to chose a background
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Click image to find your pose
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Click image to find your mask
4. Open up the Brushes app.
5. Click the photo button to bring in the background layer
6. Click the photo button to bring in the pose layer, resize and reposition
7. Click the photo button to bring in the mask layer, resize and reposition
8. Save to the gallery and email it to me (subject line=your name and class)

View the finished artwork on Artsonia at this link or few a few examples below.
 
 
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I have so much to say about this digital graphic design lesson based on the painting Christina's World created on the ipads that I wrote it up as an article for School Arts magazine. Hopefully I will be able to share every last detail with you if it is accepted for publication.

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Meanwhile, I wanted to share some resources that I made to accompany the lesson so you can explore these ideas now while you might have time. How to use instant alpha on a mac to erase the background is  in the beginning of this video. How to use the magic wand tool from photoshop to do the same thing is in this video.

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I erased Christina out of Andrew Wyeth's original piece, Christina's World. View the video below to learn how to do it in both Keynote and Photoshop Elements. The end of the video shows a student creating the artwork on the ipad using the Brushes App.
The key to making this project work with students is the Dropbox app for sharing and accessing images for the ipad.
View our online art gallery of completed student work for this project. Many students wrote a bit in their artist statements explaining the new story they intended to tell.

 
 
Second Graders are transforming themselves into Superheroes to defend the pillars of character in this back lit silhouette graphic. They had to use body language to communicate their super powers as they work to make our world a better place. See their images here.
Becoming Superheroes
 

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