The Whiteboard Blog » Art Resources

Beautiful Curves – fun drawing tool

Danny — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:51:59 +0000

Beautiful Curves is a cute little drawing application, creating almost organic-looking artwork. According to its creator “Beautiful curves simulates that little bit of randomness in life, where you never know whats going to happen next.”

It’s a fun application, which would work on your interactive whiteboard.

Check it out here.

Beautiful Curves – fun drawing tool The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

Bembo’s Zoo – fun with fonts

Danny — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 09:24:56 +0000

Just a quick link to a website that might be of interest to primary/elementary teachers. Bembo’s Zoo is based on the book by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich. The idea behind the site is to use a font called Bembo to create 26 different animals, one for each letter of the alphabet.

So for the letter “A,” the letters that make up the word “antelope” are manipulated to form the creature’s outline. Similar things are done for “bison” and “crab,” and so on all the way through to “yak” and “zebra.”

On the IWB you could use with the screen capture tool and see if the students can work out the word from the animal. Or use it to inspire their own creations.

Check it out at : http://www.bemboszoo.com/

Bembo’s Zoo – fun with fonts The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

Serif DrawPlus X5 Review

Danny — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:26:06 +0000

I’ve always been a big fan of Serif products* – they provide a much more affordable alternative to the likes of Photoshop or CorelDraw. Just out is version X5 of their popular DrawPlus vector drawing package.

As well as creating standard vector drawings – SerifDrawPlus X5 also lets you generate both Keyframe and StopFrame animations which you can export as either animated .gif files, or as Flash .swf files.

DrawPlus X5 contains all the drawing tools you’d expect. There are lots of pre-set document types including posters, greetings cards and banners, to kick start your designs.

New in X5 is The Shape Builder Tool which can be used to combine simple shapes, including the built-in palette of QuickShapes, into more complex shapes. Dragging between the shapes combines them, and clicking on shapes that overlap will split and create new objects. It’s quick and easy to use.

An instant 3D conversion tool lets you convert simple objects into 3 dimensional shapes. There is also new Styles tab that lets you quickly apply various preset shadows, glows, bevels, feather edges, textures, text effects and more. The user interface has been improved, including the option to display larger tool icons if you wish.

Serif DrawPlus X5 is an excellent product when compared to similar products produced by Corel and Adobe. It can’t do everything these can, but it does enough, and the price should make it very attractive for schools. A single licence for DrawPlus X5 is about £80. It’s also worth looking at the Serif Design Suite which packages up DrawPlus along with MoviePlus, PhotoPlus and WebPlus. A 100 user licence costs around £2600 plus student licences are also available. More info here.

ICT Teachers should definitely take a look at the free teacher resources for using Serif products to support/teach the OCR Nationals, 14/19 Diploma, DiDa etc. These include ideas for projects, step by step guides, pupil worksheets and course materials. It’s an excellent set of resources, and much of it is free if you contact Serif. You can also download some free samples immediately. Take a look here : http://www.serif.com/Education/CurriculumCourses/

As an aside – you can also download and try out free versions of older Serif Software here.

*Disclosure – Over the past few years I have written some of the Serif training materials for the OCR Nationals and 14/19 Diploma, namely the Multimedia, Computer Graphics and Web Design modules. I was sent a free copy of Drawplus X5 to look at, but I have not been paid for this review.

Review of the year – top posts

Serif DrawPlus X5 Review The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

10 Great Art resources for your Interactive Whiteboard

Danny — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 05:50:42 +0000

With the right software an interactive whiteboard can become a massive graphics tablet – it is a very different drawing experience to using a mouse. Here are 10 great websites that all Art teachers should have bookmarked. Most are free online drawing packages, but one or two a slightly different, but still worth exploring. Enjoy!

1. Aviary : http://www.aviary.com/ and also http://www.aviaryeducation.com/ An excellent free suite of tools for image editing – painting, vector and more. Also includes a sound editor thats worth investigating. There’s a regular version of Aviary, but now an educational version too.

2. Odosketch : http://sketch.odopod.com/

A very simple sketch package. Quite neat effect, a bit like using watercolours in a sketch book.

3. Sketchpad : http://mugtug.com/sketchpad/

Sketchpad is quite a fun paint package that works in your browser. All the basic tools you’d expect are here.

4. Google Art Project : http://www.googleartproject.com/

The Google Art Project is basically applying the Google Street View idea to the world’s art galleries. Visit some of the greatest galleries in the world and explore their paintings without leaving your classroom. Well worth a look.

5. Jackson Pollock

An oldie but a goodie. Paint in the style of Jackson Pollock, but without the mess. Works great on an interactive whiteboard. Click to change colour.

6. Bomomo : http://bomomo.com/

Bomomo is still a favourite of mine. Each “brush” creates some very abstract effects as you move your mouse across the page.

7. Crayola :

One for the younger students – choose from a variety of crayons and felt-tip pens.

8. SumoPaint : http://www.sumopaint.com/

A very impressive, full-featured paint package. Lots of great features and it’s free. A paid version with extra features also available.

9. Moodstream : http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/

This is not a drawing program, Moodstream mixes images, movies and sounds to help the creative juices flow. Is hard to describe, but worth a look. Play with the sliders to suit your mood and see what turns up. Make sure your sound is on.

10. Graffiti Creator : http://graffiticreator.net/

This is a free, online flash application which allow you to design your own name or logotype in graffiti-style. TGC comes with several fonts from throwups to bubble letters to wildstyles. The program also have an array of different tools that will help you further enhance your design. Great for designing fun titles for presentations too.

What do think of these resources? Got another one you want to share? Let me know in the comments!

10 Great Art resources for your Interactive Whiteboard The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

The BBC ‘Your Paintings’ Art Project

Danny — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:17:13 +0000

Here’s a very interesting website for Art teachers or anyone interested in art. The BBC has announced the public beta launch of a new initiative to bring the UK’s entire collection of oil paintings to the Internet for the first time. It’s called Your Paintings.

Even if you’re an art-lover and have trawled the length and breadth of the country’s galleries and museums, there’s still a good chance that thousands of paintings have escaped your eyes. The project has already collected 63,000 paintings and they are aiming to get all 200,000 in the UK.

The BBC has now partnered with the Public Catalogue Foundation and hundreds of galleries and collections across the country. The collection will be presented in Your Paintings, a dedicated section on the BBC’s website, and they will be made available to view by anyone, anytime, for free.

The BBC is enlisting the help of the public to crowdsource the mapping of the content of the paintings, with a Your Paintings Tagger.

Find out more at : http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings

Art teachers – this site will let you search by artist, by theme or by collection. It’s an excellent resource already, and will obviously grow over time. Well worth bookmarking.

Related site : Don’t forget the excellent Google Art Project too.

The BBC ‘Your Paintings’ Art Project The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

Psykopaint

Danny — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:45:42 +0000

Here’s another site to add to my list of excellent online paint packages. Psykopaint has been created “as a new tool to enable users to express their creativity with a mimimum of knowledge and skills”. It lets you paint over the top of an existing image using a variety of different tools. A slider will let you reveal the image underneath. Or you can just start with a blank canvas.

It’s great fun and well worth taking a look. http://www.psykopaint.com

Thanks to Tim Rylands for making me aware of this site via his blog.

Psykopaint The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

5 more avatar generators for profile pictures

Danny — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 20:31:02 +0000

Here’s a follow up piece to my blog post from last January about 10 Avatar Generators for Profile Pictures, which proved to be very popular. There’s obviously a lot of interest in these kind of websites!

Here are 5 more sites which let you create cartoon versions of yourself which your students (or you!) can use as an avatar in place of their own photograph.

1. Clay Yourself

Clay Yourself lets you create a version of yourself in modelling clay. Lots of choice. (Thanks Lara for the link!)

2. ArtisanCam

A quick way of producing a sketch version of yourself. Limited choice of options.

3. Become an M and M

This lets you recreate yourself as an M and M sweet from the adverts. Probably going against the school’s healthy eating agenda… (Technically it’s “Become an M”)

4. Lloyds TSB Me

This lets you recreate yourself in the style of the characters from the Lloyds TSB banking adverts.

5. Grabba Beast

Grabba Beast lets you build your own monster from a large library of body parts, some scary, some cute. Plenty of weird and strange designs. This would also be great for creating characters for digital storytelling.

If you haven’t already checked out the other 10 great sites, then go and take a look at the blog post from last year. If you want more of these sites, the full list can be found on my Delicious list here: http://delicious.com/dannynic/avatar

5 more avatar generators for profile pictures The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

Draw with ScribblerToo

Danny — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 13:00:18 +0000

A very quick post for a Friday to link to another online drawing application – ScribblerToo.

I like the slightly abstract way it joins up lines if you get them close to another one. This would be really fun on an interactive whiteboard.

Check out some of the other sites listed down the left hand side of the page. There are some other interesting ones there, such as this Snowflake Maker and string spinner.

For other drawing packages, check out: 12 Art Resources for your IWB

Draw with ScribblerToo The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

The Amazing Google Art Project

Danny — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:17:08 +0000

Today Google unveiled the Art Project, a unique collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail.

Basically its Google Street view inside various art museums. You can move around the halls and explore all the artwork in detail.

Over the last 18 months Google has worked with 17 art museums including, Altes Nationalgalerie, The Freer Gallery of Art Smithsonian, National Gallery (London), The Frick Collection, Gemäldegalerie, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Museo Reina Sofia, Museo Thyseen – Bornemisza, Museum Kampa, Palace of Versailles, Rijksmuseum, The State Hermitage Museum, State Tretyakov Gallery, Tate, Uffizi and Van Gogh Museum.

The results of this partnership, which can be explored at www.googleartproject.com involved taking a selection of super high resolution images of famous artworks, as well as collating more than a thousand other images into one place. It also included building 360 degree tours of individual galleries using Street View ‘indoor’ technology.

With this unique project, anyone anywhere in the world will be able to learn about the history and artists behind a huge number of works, at the click of a mouse.

Each of the museums has worked in extensive collaboration with Google, providing expertise and guidance on every step of the project, from choosing which collections to feature; to advising on the best angle to capture photos; to what kind of information should accompany the artwork.

Works of art included in the project range from Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ to Chris Ofili’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’, Cezanne’s post impressionist works to Byzantine iconography. From the ceilings of Versailles to ancient Egyptian temples, a collection of Whistlers to Rembrandts all over the globe. In total, 486 artists from around the world have been included.

Here’s a video that explains more:

This is a fantastic resource for Art teachers. You could explore museums before going on school trips there. Plus explore ones you could never hope to take a trip to! A fantastic resource for any interactive whiteboard!

Visit it now at : http://www.googleartproject.com/

The Amazing Google Art Project The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom

DeviantArt Muro plus Jackson Pollock

Danny — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 07:10:35 +0000

I’ve written before about some of the great online painting and drawing packages that you can find, for free, online. Here’s an old blogpost with 12 of my favourites. All of these are great on the interactive whiteboard, which basically becomes a massive graphics tablet!

I’ve come across two more to add to this growing list.

DeviantART Muro

The DeviantArt website is the largest online social network for artists and art enthusiasts. It allows emerging and established artists to exhibit, promote, and share their work online.

As part of their website – there’s a very useful HTML5 drawing package called Muro. At the basic level it’s free, and you can purchase additional brushes using DeviantArt points, if you’re a registered member of the site. Check it out here: http://muro.deviantart.com/

Jackson Pollock

If you’ve ever wanted to paint like Jackson Pollock – then check out this great little application which lets you paint just like him. http://www.manetas.com/pollock/ Click on the big picture to enter the painting application.

Happy painting!

DeviantArt Muro plus Jackson Pollock The Whiteboard Blog - Supporting the use of technology in the classroom