Selfie!

Thought you kids would like this!

Copic Illustration. Photo to Drawing, 8th garde

Copic introduced a new technique in which you take a photograph and turn it into an illustration. It's called Tracing Memories.
 8th grade students started by taking photographs around the school. We set up photographic lights and backgrounds and many of them used the set up for portraits and still lives. We then converted the photographs into line art in photoshop. After printing the black and white photograph as well as the color photograph, students match the colors in their color photo to the Copic markers colors using this color swatch sheet. To color the black and white photograph, we went over basic Copic marker blending and coloring techniques, as well as understanding the coding on the markers, and care for the markers. For their second illustration, many students chose to use the same photograph, but make the colors unrealistic.
 The results are fantastic! Don't you think so?
 Here is the youtube tutorial that I found to easily convert the photographs to line art:

A Humument, Altered Pages, 5th grade

5th grade students created altered pages based on Tom Phillips' treated Victorian Novel, "A Humument". The back story on this novel is this: In 1966, Tom Phillips happened upon an old 1892 Victorian novel by W.H. Mallock called, "A Human Document". Tom made it his mission to creatively alter each page, altering the text and the story of the book. By 1973, Tom had finished the book.
 5th grade students worked on a handful of pages, finding words that brought them interest first. Some ideas included: circling words that start with the same letter, follow a pattern, or every 10th word. Students used various mixed mediums not limited to acrylic paint, water color, collage, pen and ink, and pastel.
I was lucky enough to see the book in it's entirety at MassMOCA this past winter. The exhibit and the book in the gift shop inspired me to share it with the 5th grade students.