Drawing and Painting in the Browser window

Summer is almost here, and you may have a few blocks of time to cover in a computer lab before it's all over!  Why not give your students a session with one of these "in browser" drawing/painting sites. Students can be creative and then save their art work for posting on a class site, or for printing as refrigerator art!

Artpad

http://artpad.art.com/artpad/painter/

Sketchy

http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/#sketchy

Crayola

http://www.crayola.com/coloring_application/index.cfm

Be an Artist: Create your own still life

I was at a meeting with some Elementary Computer teachers in my district, looking at some web-based drawing programs, and I mentioned the "Still Life" Painter on the US National Gallery of Art site. If you haven't seen it, it is worth a visit.

While it can be a little slow to load (depending on your connection), it's great fun. Students can view a "typical" still life composition and then take a turn creating their own, using the various elements provided. You can choose the table, the drape, the background, the fruit, the bowls and additional elements. Then you can add a "paint" effect to personalize your creation. The interface allows the student to create 8 different versions and hold them in "frames" along the right side of the screen (activated by the "look" button.)

From the site:

[Students] can explore spatial arrangement, perspective, proportion, and balance while creating engaging, interactive still life compositions that mix everyday objects with elements borrowed from famous works of art.

While there is a print feature, it seemed a little buggy, so I just used SHIFT+APPLE+4 on my Mac to snap png images of my work. The finished products can be viewed in Preview as a slide show.

http://www.nga.gov/kids/zone/stilllife.htm

Create Your Own Space

[This site is no longer active]




I came across this "fun" site (Design My Room) that allows the user to set up and furnish rooms à la "Designing Spaces". You are given a huge selection of furnishings and furniture, as well as colours, window treatments and lots of doodads and knickknacks.

Be an interior designer, or recreate your parents' living room. Students can be creative and imagine a character's house or use this as a jumping off point for a short story.

While you need an account to save your creations for re-editing later, you can build and design without an ID. Keeping a record of your work can be done by simply taking a screen shot.

This would be a fun way to work on vocabulary, talk about colours and textures, and even look at "art and design" issues for older kids. Have fun!

Polyvore: design your life.

So my latest find is actually one of my daughter's current favourite sites: Polyvore (She's crazy about it and loves to create.) You can design "window displays" and create interior design or fashion design layouts.

The interface pulls objects from the internet (taken mostly from on-line catalogs so each object stands alone as a cutout image.) and you can then resize them and put them together collage-like. Take a look at this"artsy" example.

Layouts can be printed, saved, embedded etc.
(The vendors make their money by having every element you choose appear on the "shopping list" showing where the item can be purchased.)

Students can have fun designing displays on assigned themes, dreaming up a layout for another student after a fashion "interview" and using their creations to add to their virtual portfolio, especially if they hope to apply to a design program.