Teentech Surrey.
Tags: college, brushes app, Guildford, ArtRage, Tablet art, Surrey Sports Park, Flowpaper, Teentech Surrey, STEM, SATRO, Surrey UNiversity
Date: 13 November 2014 13:55:22
In a slightly ironic move (given Nicky Morgan's comments yesterday) Wednesday saw the students and I deliver a full days teaching of tablet art technique to a range of year 10 and 11 students from a wide range of schools.
Excellent fun it was too, although I was utterly dog tired when I managed to drag my weary feet home... We used Flowpaper (which allowed me to talk about the very talented artist/programmer Richard 'Dr' Bailey who created some wonderfully beautiful procedural art images. After that we created an image in Brushes app (v2. v3 sadly doesn't appeal to me in the same way) which allowed me to talk a little about Hockney and the RA. It's a bit mean of me to teach on the app, really, as it's not commercially available but it is a masterclass in UI design, even now years on from this version release and a year or so since it was pulled from the (app) shelf. Brushes remains one of the best tablet art apps which is what makes it all the sadder that you can't buy it.
Finally, we did a picture in ArtRage app, a hugely powerful and phenomenally lovely piece of software available for desktop and tablet. It was good fun to use and, while the students all had their favourite app, this was the one that the teachers gravitated towards the most.
A lot of work then, especially as it was my day off, but it was a lot of fun. Everyone seemed to have a good time and we had some great pictures drawn on the devices. Bearing in mind each kid had less than 15 minutes to draw on the screens I think we came out with some very nice pieces of work.
As well as being my day off it was also the day of no classes for most of the students who joined me. Despite that they also did a full days work, never complaining (well, apart from not enough food in one students case) and being as good as I could have hoped. Well done them, as always. On their break, between sessions 5 and 6, the students sat around to do even more work, drawing the NAO Active Robot who made a short appearance on our stand. I got to draw for 20 minutes too, so all told it was a happy time...
(I will add some of their pics to the blog soon but as soon as I arrived back I put the iPads in the classroom and headed off home. That's an update to come...)