Archive for category Advanced Higher Graphics
Safeguarding Digital Course Evidence with ‘Dropbox’
Posted by Jim Black in Advanced Higher Graphics, Digital course evidence on August 19, 2010
On average, at least two pupils a year, studying Advanced Higher Graphics here at The Royal High School, lose significant amounts of course work because it hasn’t been backed up somewhere.
This year, I’ll be encouraging pupils to use http://dropbox.com. Dropbox provides 2 GB of free storage on its servers (and up to 100 GB, for a fee). The smart thing though, is that the service enables a user to synchronise the content of his drop box with identical folders located on his desktop P.C., laptop, and smart phone. A user may have this folder duplicated on as many computers as desired. Dropbox runs in the background on your computer, ensuring that files are kept up to date.
It’s also possible to synchronise a folder on a ‘U3 enabled’ USB stick. U3 enabled USB sticks aren’t always recognised by computers, and this is the case at The Royal High School. In any case, Dropbox’s site is blocked within school.
I expect teachers in other schools are encouraging their pupils to use services that are similar to Dropbox. In the past, pupils here have used Sky Drive, which allows on-line storage. They’ve also used Diino, before its free service was discontinued. Neither of these offered the automatic synchronising of data over several computers / devices, however.
If you’re using an on-line storage / synchronising service, which is free for pupils to use, then let us know about it. Also, if you’ve been able to / allowed to get it running in your school, please get in touch.
More Pastel Drawings
Posted by Jim Black in Advanced Higher Graphics on August 4, 2010
I produced these drawings while preparing for the new session, when pupils in the Advanced Higher Graphics class will be using pastels to produce the ‘visuals’ for their desktop publishing assignments. They’ll also use their pastel drawings to illustrate their final pieces.
Each of the drawings is an exercise from the Pastel Workbook by Jackie Simmonds.
Another Pastel Instruction Book
Posted by Jim Black in Advanced Higher Graphics on July 26, 2010
Our Advanced Higher Graphics pupils will be illustrating their main desktop publishing (DTP) piece using pastels this session. As I’m a beginner myself with the medium, I’ve been practicing (see earlier post) and reading instruction books.
A few days ago I purchased:
Painting Beautiful Skin Tones with Color & Light, by Chris Saper.
In the introduction of her book, Ms Saper states:
‘Intuitive instruction – “just pick out some color,” “use color that expresses the way you feel” – has never helped me. But instructors who have taught me how to see – what to look for and why – have given me tools I can use for a lifetime. This book is designed to give you tools you can use, too.
The book is superb, and covers portrait painting with oils, watercolour and especially pastels, really well. It’s particularly strong on colour theory and colour use, and breaks it down in to clear do and don’t guidelines. These guidelines are relevant to any branch of painting, not just portraiture. The book is beautifully illustrated by Ms Saper, using step by step views of her own paintings, which are stunning.
Ms Saper’s web site is at:
As well as displaying examples of her work, she lists her fees for undertaking portraits. I expect she’s one of the few artists around who earns a living from traditional portraiture.
Ms Saper has written a second book and, interestingly, has chosen to publish it via Blurb.com, the same ‘on-demand’ printer we’ve used for our pupils’ children’s story books. It’s at:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/152139
Jim
Advanced Higher Graphics Bowling & Meal
Posted by Jim Black in Advanced Higher Graphics on May 7, 2010
On Tuesday 04 May most of the class went bowling, then on for a meal, to mark the end of the course. A huge number of photos were taken, as the camera was passed from person to person.
In past years, we’ve invited along former pupils who’ve studied Advanced Higher Graphics, but we didn’t get organised early enough to be in shape to do so this time.
At Fountain Park, we had two sessions of bowling, with Michael winning both games. Around 9 pm we went next door to Nando’s restaurant.
At Nando’s our waiter was former Royal High pupil Chris Riva. Late in the evening we were joined by Graham Carolan, another former Royal High pupil. Graham expects to be posted to Afghanistan with the army, later in the year.
Advanced Higher Graphics ‘Visuals’, 2010 – 2011
Posted by Jim Black in Advanced Higher Graphics on April 10, 2010
Last year we were fortunate to have Myrna MacLeod visit us and deliver a talk. Myrna is the lead tutor of the Graphic Design course at Napier University. She made it clear that much of the content of Graphic Communication courses is not of use to her in deciding whether a pupil should be offered a place on her course. Since then, we’ve been looking at ways to satisfy her requirements, as a number of our pupils are applying for entry to this type of course each year.
The ‘visuals’ element of the Advanced Higher Graphics course offers the opportunity to produce portfolio work that may be more useful to pupils applying for graphic design courses. Over the years, the visuals that pupils have produced at Royal High have been a bit disappointing, and not to the standard that would allow them to be included in a portfolio. There have been highlights though -
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/ahgc_2004_asuna_images/asuna_visual1b.jpg
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/ahgc_2004_asuna_images/asuna_visual2b.jpg
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/ahgc_2004_sarah_images/sarah_visual1a.jpg
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/ahgc_0405/zoe/zoe_visual1a.jpg
http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/ahgc_0405/zoe/zoe_visual3a.jpg
In the coming session, I anticipate that pupils will combine drawings in pastel with tracing paper overlays, to create their visuals. Using a tracing paper overlay will allow the pastel drawing to remain a ’stand alone’ portfolio item as well as be a course visual. Pupils will scan their pastel drawings and actually incorporate them in their final DTP pieces, perhaps manipulating them in Gimp along the way. Pupils will set up still life compositions, photograph them and use the photos to help investigate composition. They’ll also use Inkscape to produce vector traces of their photos, to investigate tone / value, and produce ‘value’ sketches. As we have very little space to keep still life object groups assembled, I anticipate that pupils will work from their photos and value sketches to produce their pastel drawings.
Until a few days ago I had almost no experience in using pastels. I’ve now worked through some of the exercises in the ‘Pastel Workbook’ by Jackie Simmonds and found pastels to be relatively straightforward to use. It’s a quick process and it’s easy to produce strong colours, though finished drawings are going to be tricky to store, to avoid smudging.
As an alternative or addition to pastels, pupils who already have watercolour skills will be encouraged to utilise them in the coming session.
I’m also working on a clay modelling ‘visuals’ project that will investigate incised letterforms and calligraphy and may incorporate texturing work using a rapid prototyped calligraphic stamp. I anticipate that pupils will produce their own stamps in-house, modelling them in Pro/Engineer or Blender, then printing them on our (not quite assembled yet) Rapman. I’ll post info in due course.
Setting Deadlines for Pupil Work
Posted by Jim Black in Advanced Higher Graphics on March 27, 2010
Thursday 18 March was the Advanced Higher Graphics course deadline night, with most pupils working until the janitors threw them out of school at 9-30pm. Mid-evening, pupils phoned out for Chinese take-out, to keep us going. Despite the stress the evening was good fun.
We’ll have another late night on Tuesday 30 March, with Higher Graphics pupils.
At Royal High, school management doesn’t allow us to set ‘hard’ deadlines throughout the year: if pupils don’t bother about a deadline, they’re allowed to submit the work later during the course. The result is that most pupils allow themselves to fall significantly behind with submissions. By March, some still haven’t submitted work that was due in September.
In the past, I’ve asked school management to allow us to insist that if a deadline is missed, then the work may not be put forward to gain course credits – as is the case on design courses at university. I’m sure this would revolutionise pupils’ approach to deadlines, giving them a big incentive to keep up with work. Pupils would be less stressed in the latter stages of the course, and therefore would be less likely to fall ill, wouldn’t have their performance affected in other subjects, and crucially, would have completed asssignments available for the university interview season, which commences in February. With the new management regime here at school, perhaps I’ll resubmit my proposal.
As a reaction to the complete flexibility pupils have over deadlines, and to prevent myself being inundated with requests for support for all course elements in the latter stages of the session, nowadays I set cut-off dates for support in Advanced Higher Graphics. After a certain date, I no longer provide any support or input for a course element. This works for me, allowing me to concentrate on the work in hand. Pupils still have access to the extensive written, on-line and exemplar resources that I’ve put in place. Nevertheless, some do find themselves feeling a bit stranded, if they hit a problem with work that I’m no longer supporting.
How do other CDT departments approach deadlines? Does their school management team allow them to set ‘hard’ deadlines? I’m interested to know.
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.Glasgow Study Trip
Posted by Jim Black in Advanced Higher Graphics on February 6, 2010
On Thursday 04 February, the Advanced Higher Graphics class visited Glasgow.
We departed from school at 08.00 hrs and travelled in the minibus to Kelvingrove, where the bus was parked for the day. We then spent an hour and a half in the museum before travelling in to the town centre on the underground.
Following lunch at three different venues – we couldn’t agree on a single one – we took a tour of the Lighthouse. We spent a considerable time on the sixth floor viewing deck, where several pupils tried out their Christmas presents – digital SLR cameras. Elsewhere in the Lighthouse there was the permanent Charles Rennie Mackintosh exhibition, as well as a room given over to work created by Strathclyde University architecture students.
From the Lighthouse, we walked up to Sauchiehall Street, to the Willow Tearooms, where we took afternoon tea. There followed free time, then a meal in TGI Fridays. The final activity of the day was a nostalgic viewing of Toy Story 2, in 3D, at Cineworld.
We retured by underground to Kelvingrove, then back to school by 22.15 hrs.
The photos in the slide show below were downloaded from my camera. Most were taken by Hazel.
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.
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