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Artsy Dork on Pinterest and Youtube

Wow! Another school year is coming to a close and, as any teacher can tell you, it’s an incredibly busy time of year. I really haven’t had much time to check in on the blog, but I did take a peek this weekend and was floored to see my infant blog with 10 to 20 views per day had skyrocketed to 2000-3000 views per day virtually overnight!

I was a little shell-shocked, especially since I haven’t had much time to tend to this blog or even link my social media pages (breaking a cardinal rule of blogging). I figured I should at least link to the few social media pages that I currently have out there and feel free to follow if you find any of my blog posts helpful and insightful.

Oh . . . and to all of you who have helped my blog go from zero to sixty overnight, thanks so much for reading and I really hope that you’ll get some good use out of the information I put on this blog.

Artsy Dork on Youtube

I started this youtube page a while back as a place to house video tutorials I would create for my classes. You’ll find everything on there from photography tutorials, to making a bird out of Model Magic. Some of my older videos aren’t the best quality, but they’ve improved over time. I’m hoping to actually create some more “professional” videos in the near future as well.

If you are interested in art, crafts, Photoshop, photography, etc. you might find some useful tutorials on my page. Feel free to also leave me a message of any tutorials you might want to see that I don’t yet have up.

Art, design, and crafts tutorials on youtube.
A screenshot of my Youtube page and a few of my tutorial videos.

Artsy Dork on Pinterest

First of all, I am addicted to Pinterest. My personal page has over 10,0000 pins. It gets to a point that I would never have the time to actually go back and look at each one of them. That said, I look at Pinterest as a way to create your own customized resource for all of the subjects in which you are most interested.

My Artsy Dork Pinterest page is rather new but, like this blog, it’s focused on teaching tips, design, and art. So basically, it’s a one-stop-shop for resources, inspiration, and tutorials. Feel free to follow if that sounds interesting to you.

So finally, thanks again for reading this blog. It’s my little side project that can sometimes get a bit neglected, but I love sharing my ideas, struggles, and experiences with others so I hope you will continue to check in for more.

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Photography, Photoshop

Isolated Color Photography

Giving a nod to Gestalt theory, my beginning photography students manipulated some of their photos to create anomalies of isolated color.

They learned that you can create a focal point (a point of visual interest) by highlighting an area of difference in the image (in Gestalt theory, this is called an anomaly). There are many ways to do this, but in this instance, we highlighted these areas by keeping them in color and desaturating the rest of the photo. It was a simple process, but the resulting photos are fun, and the students learned one more way of making their photos compositionally effective.

*All artwork generated by the following students, grades 10-12 [Katelyn C.] [Maja N.] [Justin R.]

Isolated color photography assignment in high school photography.
This student used a wide aperture to create a bokeh effect in the background, creating added texture in her photo.
Beginning photography assignment, creating a focal point of color.
This photo was taken by a foreign exchange student, hence the London scene.

This is a great mini-lesson for beginning photography students because it got them thinking a bit more about composition, but it is still a simple enough concept to quickly grasp. That said, they do have to put more effort into their photo planning before starting this project. For instance, they not only have to decide what would be the best focal point and overall composition, but they have to envision how the pop of color will impact and possibly change the visual movement in their image. It’s an added element that helps students to realize the importance of planning in the photographic process.

Students tend to have a high success rate with this project because the process in Photoshop is easy to master. It’s also a great way to give new photography students extra practice with the basics of shooting in manual mode and metering, while still producing a new style of photograph.

 You can learn how to make your own isolated color photo in the video tutorial below.

High school photography lesson about composition.
As you can see, this student had a great photography model at home.