The Amazing Google Art Project
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/
Read MoreDeviantArt Muro plus Jackson Pollock
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!
Read MoreAviary for Education
I’ve written about the fabulous Aviary before. If you haven’t seen it, Aviary provides a suite of online tools that allows you to take create images, edit screenshots, edit sounds and create music. All for free, and all through your browser.
I was rather pleased to find out that there will soon be an special version for students and educators that lets them use Aviary in a completely private setting which is separate from the rest of the Aviary community. Aviary Education will let teachers:
• Create private student accounts
• Manage assignments and projects
• Use the image editor, vector editor, audio editor & music creator
• access content and images which are 100% school safe
It’s currently in beta, so if you want to try it out you can request a free beta trial.
Check it out now: http://www.aviaryeducation.com/
Read More12 Art Resources for your IWB
There’s nothing better than playing with an art program on an interactive whitboard and literally drawing with your finger. It really works like a massive graphics tablet. And there are some excellent, free, online drawing packages. Some are quite simple, and others really mimic real-world art materials.
For the entire list, check out my Delicious page under Art + IWB, but here are a few of my favourites:
Sumopaint: This is an excellent resource – a free, fully featured paint package in your browser.Very impressive.
Sketchpad : Another paint package demonstrating the capability of the new HTML5 – this doesn’t use Flash, which is quite interesting. If that last sentence made no sense, don’t panic. Just have a play and paint something!
Livebrush is another free paint package, that should work well on an IWB. The size of the brush stroke depends on the speed you drag across the page, the faster you go the broader the brush stroke. Needs Adobe Air, so check you can install it at school.
Dreezle: A simple, java-based paint application.
Aviary : A fantastic site. Aviary contains a stack of great free tools, it even has a sound editor!
Sketch : The brush tool gives a really realistic effect and you can alter lots of different variables if you want – or just paint away!
Crayola Digi-Colour: Choose from a variety of Crayola products including crayons, pencils and stamps. If you want to do something more off-line then there are colouring pages to print out as well. The Crayola site also has a lot of information for teachers including lesson plans here.
Bomomo : I love this. It’s brilliant for making abstract drawings. Some of the pens are really fun. Quite hypnotic to watch
Imagination Cubed : This has been around a while, but it’s still really fun. You can even collaborate with friends on a joint drawing.
Splashup : An online paint package very similar to Sumo Paint. ( There’s also a Lite version too for netbooks and less powerful computers)
Mondrimat : Create blocks of colour in the style of Piet Mondrian.
This is Sand : Another odd, but very hypnotic application. Make pictures by piling up sand. Fun.
As a bonus, check out Artpad - a quick and simple paint package. Share and see what others have painted in the gallery.
Have fun!
Read MoreArtrage – natural media painting
One type of software that is really cool on an interactive whiteboard are the various painting packages. Drawing is hard with a mouse, but better with a graphics tablet – and you can’t get a bigger graphics tablet than an Interactive Whiteboard.
If you own a Promethean board then you might be interested to know that Promethean have teamed up with ArtRage to provide a simple way of obtaining a demo version of their very cool painting package.
You can download the Promethean version of Artrage here. (more about this on the Promethean blog). If you don’t own a Promethean board, then you can still download the regular, free version of Artrage from the Artrage website here.
ArtRage Starter Edition gives you 8 painting tools and lets you create, save, and print as many pictures as you like and doesn’t limit their size. The full version contains additional paint tools, the ability to paint on multiple layers, metallic paint, stencils and rulers, and a long list of additional features.
It is called a natural media painting program because it stimulates real things, such as spraycans, crayons, oil paints, rollers and glitter, which all interact with each other on the digital canvas much as they do in real life.
Artrage has just released Artrage Studio and Artrage Studio Pro with a whole pile of new features. If you like the starter edition you can upgrade to a full version of v3 Pro for about £50. If that’s a little steep you can upgrade to the older v2.5 for £13.
If you’ve never used ArtRage, it gives you the feeling that you are painting with real paint, as oppose to pixels. It’s really easy to pick up. It’s fun to use with a mouse, but the addition of an IWB makes for a very different painting experience!
Get the free version of Artrage now, and see what you think.
Read More10 avatar generators for profile pictures
With the release of the James Cameron movie (which I highly recommend you see, by the way) everyone has now heard the word Avatar. In computing, an avatar is often the name used for the little picture you use on profile pages for things like blogs, twitter etc.
If you are blogging with students – it’s recommended that you don’t use real photographs of the students. A fun alternative is to create a cartoon avatar instead.
Here are 10 websites that you can use to create fun avatars. Some allow you to save the finished creation as a jpg for free. If not, then use the print screen button to copy the screen, paste into a paint program, crop and save as a jpg.
Sadly the avatar avatar generator is no longer available.. which was a shame as it was quite fun, although very slightly creepy.
1. WeeMee -Create a mini version of yourself, add accessories. There’s plenty of scope for customisation of your avatar.
2. South park studio – turn yourself into a South Park character
3. HeroMachine 2.5 – Turn yourself into a super hero character. This would also be great as a part of a digital storytelling resource or story starter.
4. FaceYourManga.com Create a character in the style of a manga comic book
5. Ultimate Flash Face v0.42b a bit like a police photofit.
6. Make yourself in lego – Produce a lego character that looks like you. Or turn yourself into a Stormtrooper wizard. Is up to you 
7. Simpsons Movie – Ever wanted to be a Simpsons character? Now you can create your own yellow-skinned doppleganger in the style of the Simpsons.
8. Mr. Picassohead – become an abstract piece of work in the style of Picasso. Put your eyes and ears wherever you want!
9. BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF – Create an avatar out of bits and pieces of humans and other animals – head, arms, legs, clothes, eyes, mouth, tail, wings, shells … just pick the parts you like and assemble them together
10. My Mii Avatar Generator – create a Mii in the style of the characters found on the Wii computer console.
If you want more of these sites, the full list can be found on my Delicious list here: http://delicious.com/dannynic/avatar
Read MoreSpice up images with Big Huge Labs
If you’re bored with the usual images and want to add some special effects to your pictures, then check out Big Huge Labs.
This site provides hundreds of different filters than can be applied to your photos to add many different special effects.
You can give the site access to your Flickr or Facebook photo albums, or just upload images for it to work on.
For example – turn one of your images into a stamp.
Or a piece of pop art in the style of Andy Warhol
Or maybe turn it into a jigsaw (Sadly not an interactive jigsaw)
or a mosaic in the style of David Hockney
You can also create calendars, badges, magazine covers, movie posters and many more! One tool even lets you turn 6 images into a printable cube – this would be good to make dice for languages with different images on each face.
Go check out Big Huge Labs today!
Read MoreCollaborative drawing with Flockdraw
I’m always a fan of collaborative tools that let you work on the same document across the internet. I’m also a fan of online drawing tools. So I really like collaborative drawing tools
Flockdraw is another collaborative drawing tool that’s well worth taking a look at.
It’s free to use, and you get a unique URL which you can use to share your drawing with others, and have them contribute. Combine this with an interactive whiteboard, which makes it much easier to draw than a mouse, and you have quite a fun tool. 10 users can all be drawing at the same time. Others can view the drawing, but not take part.
You also get an embed code which you can use to embed your drawing into a web page. I tried it on the blog here, but it doesn’t scale – so is far too wide…. wiping out all the sidebars. Would be fine on a VLE / Learning Platform page though.
Here’s the pad I set up. I was not able to use it on a board, so it’s just a mouse scribble.
If you like art stuff online – also check out Livebrush, Scribbler, Dabbleboard, SumoPaint, Bomomo and Imagination Cubed.
Read MoreRemake the Stars – Art and Second Life
This video was shown at the Essex ICT conference I attended last week. I think it’s a very powerful example of how modern technology can give you a different perspective on things. What better way to understand a piece of artwork than to jump right into it.
It’s called Watch The World by an artist who’s Second Life name is Robbie Dingo. In it he shows how he recreated Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” within Second Life.
Sadly, the work no longer exists in Second Life, it was created purely to make this video machinima.
Read more about how it was made, and download higher resolution versions here.
Read More
About Me
Danny Nicholson : Educator, Science teacher, ICT Consultant, PGCE lecturer, Author and Web2.0 / SMART Masters/ Interactive Whiteboard Trainer. Contact me for any training requests. 
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