Category: Collage

Realistic and Abstract

4/25/2016

My second graders had two very different portrait experiences this year. First they learned all the rules for creating a REALISTIC self-portrait with features drawn in the correct places with correct proportions. We carefully measured and studied the face to make these beautiful winter self portraits. View the gallery of finished work here.

Then, these same students were given cardboard, foam board, puzzle pieces, and odds and ends. They were shown examples from this School Arts article by Donna Staten and images of Picasso's cubist portraits. They were then told to go ahead and break all the rules to make ABSTRACT portraits. See the growing gallery here.

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Go Away Big (any color) Monster!

1/28/2016

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Lesson based on this book

Focus on symmetry

Colors and shapes

1st grade construction paper collage based on book, Go Away Big Green Monster. Click to view students' art gallery on Artsonia

I bought the book, Go Away Big Green Monster, used on Amazon thinking it would be perfect for a construction paper collage lesson. When it arrived it was all ripped up. I couldn't really read it to my students. So, I decided to use it as an inspiration for our own version of the story that would lead perfectly into our collage lesson. I made it out of shapes in Keynote and animated it slide by slide. I let the students come up and touch the interactive whiteboard to take us to the next digital page of the story. I set it to music to add a bit more suspense. Below is a recording of what our book looks like. It's much more fun when the kids participate. So, here is the keynote file for you to give it a try. When the lesson was complete we created a word bank of colors and shapes and filled out a monster display form. This helped reinforce some of the concepts we explored.

Go Away Big Pink Monster from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

I put the powerpoint lesson with instructions and resources built in to lead you and your students through the steps needed to create a colorful construction paper monster collage that reinforces shapes, symmetry, and color balance on TpT. The lesson is based on the book by Ed Emberley, Go Away Big Green Monster. I created an animated version of his story to introduce this lesson (see above). This project was perfect for my first graders but would probably work anywhere between pre-K and 2nd grades.

Digital Lesson Extensions:

Filtered in the percolator app

When students were finished with their monster collages I gave them the iPads. We photographed them using Percolator app and played with their fun filters. These pieces were uploaded to their online art galleries on Artsonia. I knew they were a big hit when they started showing up on student's t-shirts in art class a few weeks later. Below is another digital extension where students can build a monster completely on the iPad using the Create a Monster HD app.

T-Shirt purchased from Artsonia

Finished art was put in the Percolator app for these abstracted results. Click image to view students' gallery

This app is a natural digital extension since it is designed to create a digital monster collage

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Photoshlopping Art and Pop Culture

6/27/2014

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Me as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz

photoshop |ˈfōtōˌSHäp| alter (a photographic image) digitally using computer software: (as adj. photoshopped) : goofy photoshopped pictures of politicians.ORIGIN 1990s: from Adobe Photoshop, the proprietary name of such a software package.
photoshlop* |ˈfōtōˌSHLäp| altering digital images using iPad apps to change the meaning, create a spoof, enter into art, or re-imagine yourself. ORIGIN 2012ish: once super amazingly easy collage apps like superimpose became available for the iPad. *my unofficial definition

Was a Portrait by Gilbert Stuart

Was "The Love Letter" by Fragonard

Was a girl with a guitar by Vermeer

The Superimpose app is one of many ways to PHOTOSHLOP on the iPad. I used it to re-imagine these pieces of art with Fuglestad faces. This would be a fun lesson for my students that could easily connect with history, popular culture, fine arts, and prompt a writing activity.

Top Left: John Jacob Astor by Gilbert Stuart
Top Right: The Love Letter by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Left: Young Woman Playing a Guitar by Johannes Vermeer

Fuglestad Jones

Mr. Fuglestad is a good sport. He posed for this Indiana Jones photoshlop with his best Harrison Ford expression. (He did pretty good, didn't he?) The lighting, tilt of his head, and overall coloring didn't match but I adjusted this with the superimpose app (and procreate app).

Original image

bring in photo with matched expression and pose

mask your face w/ brush and blur edges

Filter to match color, contrast, brightness

transform to match tilt, size, & proportions

Use gradient mask to blend

The gradient mask helps you photoschlop like a pro. They feather the two layers gradually.

Try adding a filter over the finished piece to even out the coloring and/or texture

Me in Renoir's "Two Sisters"

Mr. & Mrs. Fuglestad in a scene from "It's a Wonderful Life"

Me as Doris Day

More of my Superimpose App art lessons:
Photobombing Edward Hopper
Superhero Silhouettes
Little People Big Dreams
William Wegman Dog Collages
Downton Abbey Positive and Negative Image
Appalachian Mountains
Silhouettes with Superimpose App
On a Wheaties Box

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iPads Revealed our inner Superheroes

5/9/2014

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Our art project was inspired by this graphic for Dr. Horrible

In 2008 I saw an advertisement for Dr. Horrible (see above, right) and thought it would be so cool to create an image similar to this but use it for good, not evil. I designed a paper collage lesson and tried it with second graders. Then the following year I thought it would be fun to do this digitally. Back then (before iPads) I didn't have a simple way for students to create graphic designs. I did much of the work behind the scenes. It was about 5 minutes of work per student to create these silhouette superheroes. (What was I thinking?) Now that we have iPads everything is different. Every second grader was able to do every step of this project in one simple app.Yeah! We can learn so much more now and show the world our inner superheroes!

Click image to view the collage art gallery

Click to view the gallery. Watch the tutorial below.

Making a Superhero Silhouette in Superimpose App from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Other resources:

This original post contains links to worksheet, book, and the tutorial for creating this project on the desktop using Keynote. The link to my backgrounds is here.

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Photobombing Edward Hopper Paintings

3/26/2014

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Photobombing is the act of inserting oneself into the field of view of a photograph, often in order to play a practical joke on the photographer [painter for our purposes] or the subjects. 

I was playing with the Superimpose app and looking for images to collage when I came across Automat by Edward Hopper. His work is full of open spaces with figures in quiet or isolated poses. Many of his pieces are perfect for practicing digital collages where students can explore overlapping, relative size, middle ground, and adjusting color filters to match the environment. I practiced these images below (click to view them large) with student photos from a previous assignment. The story changes when I added the photo. These would make interesting creative writing prompts as well. Here is my curated collection of images by Edward Hopper that will be perfect for students to photobomb.
Related post: Hopping into Hopper

Violinist in Chop Suey

Clerk at the Hotel Lobby

Visitor in Compartment C Car 293

Sunlight on Brownstones with a cup of tea

Saxophone at Seven AM

Crossing the Four Lane Road

Family in Room in New York

March Madness at the Office

Out of her Chair in the Chair Car

Strange Thing at the Automat

Girl in First Row Orchestra

Soccer Mom at Western Motel

Grading Papers in the City

Chilly at the Hotel Window

Modeling at the New York Office

How to Photobomb an Edward Hopper Painting from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Choose the Edward Hopper image you want to photobomb and load it to your camera roll using the "magic touch" (click/hold/chose save image).
Pose in front of green screen as if you are in the painting consider the direction you face, expression, body language. Be sure that you are choosing a MIDDLE GROUND area where there will be some kind of overlapping.
Partner takes your photo in the camera app on your iPad.
Open the Superimpose app & import the Edward Hopper image as the background layer
Import your pose as foreground layer
Use the magic wand to eliminate the green screen.
Touch up with the paint brush to erase more and the eraser tool to bring back what you lost. Remember to resize the tools to your needs & zoom into the photo to get the details.
Transform the photo of you to the best size & move it to a place in the middle ground. There should be overlapping.
In the transform mode, slide the transparency up until you can see exactly what needs to be erased to create the illusion of overlapping.
Select the mask button & use the paintbrush to erase for overlapping.
Restore opacity to your photo & see if you need any touch ups.
Explore contrast, hues, and brightness to make your photo blend into painting.
Save to the camera roll & turn in
Scan the QR code, and upload to Artsonia. Follow on screen directions for adding title and artist statement.

Click here to this free app from the Metropolitan Art Museum would be a wonderful introductory lesson. It shows manipulated photographs from the days before Photoshop. You can take a quiz, learn why they were manipulated, and browse the collection. Use this link to grab the app.

See this commercial from American Family where hopeful actors photobomb Edward Hopper's NightHawks (owned by the Art Institute of Chicago).

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Monochromatic Triptychs

3/21/2014

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I was looking through my archives of art projects on Artsonia and found on I hadn't tried again in almost a decade.
Monochromatic Triptychs (last attempted in 2005). The third graders made amazing monochromatic paintings this year so I thought it would be fun to use our iPads to turn them into triptychs where they could see their original image and two others with color filters in a different hue side by side.
I played with two free apps to make my examples happen:
Crazy Color Booth for the filters
Pict Collage for the triptych
I'm sure there are other apps to do this, but we have these installed and ready to go, so why not use them!

Alien Filter

Alien 2 filter

Original

Used Pic Collage (horizontally) and chose 3 pict layout

Update: See their finished work on Artsonia

New update: for iOS 11 update

I lost Crazy Photo Booth when my iPads were updated to iOS11 so I looked for another solution. I put the monochromatic portrait in Brushes Redux and shifted the hue. This is actually a better way to show students more dynamically what HUE is and how it can change the color scheme of your artwork.

The monochromatic images were created in Brushes Redux and put side by side in Pic Collage

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Completed William Wegman Collages

3/3/2014

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I introduced my 5th graders to the photographs and videos of William Wegman earlier this winter. He is famous for his photos that make his dogs look human. See examples from my pinterest board here. So, my students took on the challenge of making themselves look like dogs (just the opposite, I suppose). They began by drawing and painting a dog water color portrait.
See their finished dog paintings here.
Then students came to art class with props and costumes to stand before our green screen to pose for a photo.
These photos were then added to my dropbox along with their dog portraits.
For the next couple of weeks students went through the steps of erasing the backgrounds of their art in Superimpose app, layering their images, artistically convincing us that the two are combined, adding a background, and creating a shadow on one side. All these steps are part of my tutorial which you can view here. I made this blog post to teach from with examples, tutorials, and links to resources.
VIEW THE WHOLE GALLERY OF WILLIAM WEGMAN INSPIRED COLLAGES HERE.

Painting

Pose

Digital Collage

This artist showed up for school sporting his creation on his Artsonia T-Shirt

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William Wegman Dog Photo Collage

1/28/2014

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My fifth graders are working on creating a William Wegman Styled photo collage from their water colored dog paintings and a photo they pose for with props and costumes. These images will be combined using two apps on the iPad. We will use the Superimpose app to create transparent backgrounds on both the child's pose and dog portrait painting. They will then use Sketchbook Express to layer the dog head, body, background, and shadow. There are a few techniques I came up with that make this pretty easy. Watch my tutorial below to learn my tricks.

William Wegman-ish Dog Portrait made on the iPad from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Other Resources:

Click to view this Wegman Dog Video

Click to view more on Pinterest

UPDATE:
Our finished collages turned out AMAZING!
I'm so excited and inspired by what my 5th graders are able to accomplish on iPads.

--->Take a moment to view the post here.
--->Or go straight to their online gallery here.

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Photo Collage in Sketchbook Express

9/14/2013

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I love working with art teachers on generating ideas for incorporating iPads into the art room. During the last couple of iPad workshops we would start creating by using the free app Sketchbook Express. I love the simple interface yet powerful possibilities of this FREE app. After trying our hand at drawing (see this collage of teacher's collaborative figures) we would learn to share our work with each other via AirServer on my laptop. Each participant can mirror their iPad and share the screen with each other without ever leaving their seat. See what that looked like here. There are drawbacks with teaching students to use airplay to mirror their iPads and that was demonstrated repeatedly during my last workshop. Someone kept interrupting my presentation by accidentally choosing to mirror their iPad through my laptop from a different room in the building. This would shrink my display and sometimes knock me off the stream entirely. Imagine the havoc our students could create if they used this tool for evil. (Don't get ideas, please)

Photo Collages made in Sketchbook Express

Photo Collages using Sketchbook Express

Open Sketchbook Express and touch the layers button.
Choose the flower + symbol, choose camera, reverse the camera to yourself, and take a photo of yourself framed vertically capturing your head down to your shoulders.
Still in the layers button, choose the + to add a new layer, choose flower +, choose camera, and politely ask a classmate if you can photograph a feature of their face (eyes, nose, mouth, ears, etc.) Click use.
Use the eraser tool to erase everything except the feature of the face you photographed.
Choose the transform button (it looks like arrows in four directions) and use two fingers to pinch, zoom, resize, and move until it replaces your own feature. Consider exaggerating proportions. Click done.
Add your third layer with the + button (while in the layers button) to repeat steps 2-5 with a new classmate's feature.
You've run out of layers and need to merge. Touch the top layer (it will be edged in blue) and click the arrow pointing down at the bottom of the layers tab. Choose merge. Now you've freed up another layer so repeat the process.
Choose the four squares in the left corner to save to gallery. Choose the flower arrow to save to the camera roll on the iPad.
Go to the camera roll to email your work to the teacher. Use the subject for your name and class.

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Painting with Patterns

4/15/2013

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I played with the Drawing with Carl app over the weekend after having learned about it from Karyn Keenan in Chicago. Here are her students drawings and audioboos.
I love the function in it that allows you to draw with patterns. It forced me to draw in shapes from the background to the foreground which is very similar to the way we would construct a paper collage.

I think this app would be perfect for creating a Laurel Birch styled abstract cat lesson. Here is what my students created in paint (physically) and here is a quick sketch of what I did in this app below.