Create Friday: Halloween Edition

 

In the spirit of Halloween we moved our Create Wednesday challenge to Friday and have classes either designing their own candy and packaging or taking a copyright-free cheery image and transforming it to a spooky Halloween photo with an online photo editor.

The picture above of the Chocolate Frogs from Harry Potter's candy shop Honeydukes is a great example of a unique new candy that actually made it to the shelves so I'm looking forward to your creations. Happy Halloween!

Create Wednesday: Word Portraits

 

Here's a few of the most creative student submissions from our recent Create Wednesday assignment to draw a Word Portrait from Christina and Emily from AP Art as well as Braden and Will from Studio Art.

Digital Media: Teachable Machines

We are going to continue exploring AI and machine learning today in class by working with Google's Teachable Machine to train our computers to recognize different input images. We'll be incorporating this into future projects as an input device.  We'll begin by teaching the computer AI to distinguish between 3 different images of yourself using the chromebook camera. Once we've completed that we'll record a short 10 second video of it working and submit that to the Google Classroom.

Photography: National Geographic Photographers

In Photography we are researching some famed National Geographic Photographers this week to prepare for out November Photo Story assignment. Each student has been assigned a well-known photographer who's worked with Nat Geo and we'll learn about them together.

Google Slide presentation should include: Cover page with artist, image of artist, name/class/year Birth/death date along with 10 bullet-ed facts about the artist & link to where you got the bio info 10 (large) full size, full page images of the artist's work (1 image per slide) Antonio B- Joel Sartore Kayleigh B- Bob Sasha Jr Abigail C- Ami Vitale Adam C- Ira Block Brynn F- Michael Yamashita Kathryn G- Erika Larsen Payton H- William Albert Allard Abigail H- Paul Nicklen Lauren K- Sisse Brimberg Madison L- Jodi Cobb Ryan M- Michael Nichols Nicolas M- Stephen Alvarez Christina M- Steve McCurry Mahir M- Sam Abell Andrew P John Stanmeyer Willow P- Maggie Steber Kailee R- Sarah Leen Mikaela R- David Doubilet

Digital Media: Coding, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning

In Digital Media class we are going to learn about the basics of Coding, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning this week.  We'll begin with some simple coding with code.org and learn how AI functions then progress to see how AI is used in the world around us and help take part in a scientific survey using AI to study animals.

Exterior Contour with a Zentangle Drawing

We learned a number of Basic Drawing Terms last week on Quizlet and now we are putting them into action. We are beginning work on our Exterior Contour Drawing paired with a Zentangle Drawing which will be a full page work like the example above and below. We are starting with the main contour shape in pencil then inking it and beginning the Zentangle- it makes it easier to break up the space before begining the Zentangle!

Shanti Peace Poster Contest 2020

 

This year the Shanti Poster Contest will consist of the highlights from the many years of competition winners as well as new poster designs. Some of the best 11th grade poster designs are pictured above (6 of which were from our AP Art class and 7 of which were from Smithtown).   

Congrats to Emily from our AP Studio Art Class who was chosen to be our 12th grade submission (pictured above)

Congrats to Vivianne from our AP Studio Art Class who was chosen to be our 11th grade submission (pictured above)

Adobe MAX

This week the Adobe MAX event is happening virtually and it is free for all which is a great opportunity to catch some amazing free talks on art, design, and photography. 

Suggested sessions are:

Bold New Strokes for Illustration and Painting

• Illustrator Oliver Jeffers, who is a visual artist and author working in painting, bookmaking, illustration, collage, performance, and sculpture. Curiosity and humor are underlying themes throughout Oliver's practice as an artist and storyteller.*
• Designer, letterer, and educator Lauren Hom discussing "How to Find Your Creative Voice Without Overthinking It."
• Artist David Choe, whose work appears in a wide variety of urban culture and entertainment contexts. He has illustrated and written for magazines including Hustler, Ray Gun, and Vice.*

The Art of Photography

• Photographer Elise Swopes who will discuss "Photoshop on iPad for the Modern Surrealist"
• Photographer Dario Calmese, the first African American to photograph the cover of Vanity Fair. 

Video in the Spotlight

• Famed writer and director Wes Anderson has created a perfectly-symmetrically shot, original film to share with you*
• Music video director, graphic designer, and singer-songwriter Woodkid takes us through his creative process*

From Blank Screen to Brilliant

• Artist Ai Weiwei, a Chinese contemporary artist known for his socially, politically, and culturally incisive work*
• Artist Shepard Fairey in conversation with Gil Vazquez, Executive Director, Keith Haring Foundation and David Stark, Founder and President, Artestar*

Connected, Creative, and Productive Anywhere

• Designer and writer Gail Anderson in conversation with designer and illustrator Zipeng Zhu
• Artist and illustrator Anthony Jones who has educated and helped thousands of aspiring artists to begin, or find their careers. Join him for his talk "Creativity is Not a Talent; It's a Skill You Can Learn.

Creative Luminary: Photographer Mark Seliger

• Hear from photographer Mark Seliger, known for his portraits of celebrities and political figures, with inspirational insights and anecdotes about his favorite storytelling moments.

Loved designer Stefan Sagmeister’s talk on How
To have ideas at @adobemax today, always inspiring- I will have more #creative ideas tomorrow! #AdobeMAX #AdobeEduCreative pic.twitter.com/XfMSwTjs7Q

— Tim Needles (@timneedles) October 20, 2020

Global Maker Day

 Today is Global Maker Day 2020 and we will be participating in Digital Media and AP Art class sharing out STEAM Power engineering challenge with paper.  Here's a look one solution to solving the problem.

And here is another solution with origami, I'm looking forward to see what yours looks like!

Global Maker Day Setup

 

Tomorrow we are participating in Global Maker Day so today we will prepare and practice our project and setup for the day tomorrow to share our creative STEAM Power Engineering Project.

National Geographic Explorer Classroom- Photographer Jeff Kerby

 We had a chance to speak with National Geographic Photographer Jeff Kerby this week with Explorer Classroom. Here's the recording of the session which includes some of the questions we asked Jeff about using drones and the dangers of photographing and filmming out in the wild in the Arctic.

Norman Rockwell: Imagining Freedom Exhibit

 

Norman Rockwell: Imagining Freedom Exhibit opens today at the Norman Rockwell Museum and it features the work of Tim Needles with a video art piece which includes some of Smithtown's own teachers! We'll take a look at some of the work and how the messages in both Roosevelt's speech and Rockwell's art based on it still are poignant today!

National Geographic Explorer Classroom- Photographer Jeff Kerby

We will participate in our first National Geographic Explorer Classroom session of the year with the amazing photographer and ecologist Jeff Kerby today live in Digital Media class. He will speak about his work photographing and filming the arctic using drones and share some expertise and learning. Check out some of his work in the video and link above, it's going to be an exciting talk!

Global Maker Day- STEAM Power engineering challenge

 

Next week we'll be participating in Global Maker Day on October 20th by sharing a STEAM Power engineering challenge with people around the world. Always Virtual - Always Free http://GlobalMakerDay.com

AP Art: Payment Due Tomorrow

 

In AP Art we set up accounts and must submit paymentsby tomorrow October 9 and the details are listed below.  Visit https://myap.collegeboard.org/login to check your AP number and the test code and follow the payment details below:

Here is some important information regarding payment for all AP Exams:

● Payment for all AP Exams will be due by October 9, 2020.

● All regular AP exams (EXCLUDING AP CAPSTONE EXAMS) are $95.00 per exam.

● All AP Capstone Seminar and/or AP Capstone Research Exams are $143.00 per exam.

Exams can be paid by:

❏ Credit and/or debit cards via SchoolPay. Please note there is a 3.5%

non-refundable convenience charge added to orders processed through

SchoolPay. Please visit https://www.schoolpay.com. If you do not have a current

account, please create a new account.

❏ Checks or money orders written out to “Smithtown HS East AP Exams”. Please

write the student’s name in the memo section of the check. (Students should

submit their payment to their AP Teacher).

❏ Cash (Students should submit their payment to South Administration at East).

Happy World Teachers Day!

 

It's World Teachers Day this week so we'll celebrate and share some of the global programs we'll be engaging in this year!

ISTE Creative Lab

 This week we'll be participating in some creative challenges and presentations for the ISTE virtual Creative Lab. I'm a featured presenter at the conference and will be sharing some of the creative approaches we use and projects we do along with some students on Tuesday. Each day this week we'll try some of the challenges along with teachers and artists around the world.

Extra Credit: Inktober Drawings

 

We’re taking on #INKTOBER in my studio #art classes to help learn digital & traditional #drawing techniques, here’s my digital drawing, the theme today was #fish & used it as an opportunity to teach layering color. #inktober2020 pic.twitter.com/jgbr59bH1s

— Tim Needles (@timneedles) October 1, 2020

Yesterday we created a digital drawing for the Inktober Day 1 theme of FISH, above is my example created in Procreate. Today we will take on the day 2 theme of WISP using traditional drawing materials. The term means "a small thin or twisted bunch, piece, or amount of something" which allows a great deal of room for creativity, looking forward to see your work!

Our first extra credit assignment is to choose 10 of the prompts and submit them by the end of October!

Happy Inktober!

 

Today is the first day of October so we will begin working on our Inktober drawings! This month we will be participating the creative drawing challenge which gives a different theme daily (listed above) and promotes sharing your work via social media with the #inktober2020 hashtag (which you can do at your discretion.)

This week's home assignment is to draw an image for the theme of FISH using the free drawing tool Sumo Paint on the Chromebook. We will work using these creative drawing prompts for some of our assignments in class but our first extra credit assignment is to do all 31 prompts for Inktober. The extra credit assignment and all of the 31 prompts will post on Google Classroom October 1, can't wait to see what you create!