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General Art – Digital Art A
Deposit Due at Time of Registration:
$89.40
This is a general art class geared toward high schoolers who love art and enjoy doing it in a more non traditional medium. It is important that your student has fairly strong computer skills and a program that they already work in and are familiar with such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Krita, Clip Studio, ProCreate, etc. I’m not requiring a specific program in order to keep costs flexible. I will probably be using Adobe products, but we will be doing projects that should be able to be accomplished in most of the other programs.
This is not a software class, it is an art skills and techniques class. We will study principles and elements of art and design, composition, and using different media to create art. Some possible projects and skills we’ll be working on are portraits, animation, comic book, collage, drawing and painting techniques, photography, lettering/typography, still life, landscapes. We will also be practicing critiquing and building portfolios.
Please view prerequisites and required supplies below.
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Required: Knowledge and access to a digital art tool. My recommendations are Photoshop, Illustrator, Krita, Clip Studio, ProCreate. If you have software you already use and wonder if it will work, please email me. Google Draw or similar will probably not be sufficient. (This is not a software class, it is an art skills and techniques class.)
Carissa Sheehan is a big fan of creating life-long critical thinkers and creative problem solvers. Learning how to approach problems in a visual way adds an amazing dimension to those skills. The bulk of her career has been spent working in graphic design for Christian ministries and nonprofits.
Carissa graduated with a Bachelors in Art from John Brown University and later with her Masters in Applied Linguistics from the University of Colorado at Denver. She has taught outdoor education classes, coached volleyball, and tutored adults in ESL.
In the field of graphic design she has worked as a designer as well as a Creative Director and Art Director. Much of her experience has been in small departments where she has learned the process of design from concept to delivery. This enables her to offer real world examples and advice to students who are either interested in making graphic design their collegiate field of study or who would like to use it as a way to earn money as a freelancer right away.
After studying watercolor and oil painting in college, she discovered the joys of painting with acrylic paint. She runs a small paint party business as well as sells some of her work online. She loves the laid back approach to painting exemplified in people like Bob Ross and strives to pass on an enjoyment and mastery of painting to her students.
Student S. –
This Digital Art class was an art class like no other! Mrs. Sheehan has a special way of allowing students to express their creativity and interest in art while simultaneously teaching them about new techniques and important factors in drawing. The art projects provide challenges to students using the information they learned in class, but they are open to the student’s decisions and inspiration. For instance, a student could be assigned to draw a one point perspective city, but it can be any city (even if its fictional) and it can be drawn in any style. Mrs. Sheehan also posts recordings of the class which can be incredibly useful, especially if a student misses a class or if they need to look back at anything that might have been unclear to them. Students not only get to use their creativity in their assignments but they get an opportunity to show it with the rest of the class (and with my experience, we all got positive feedback on each other’s projects). In addition, there are also opportunities for extra credit that are unnaturally simple, but they allow students to better understand Excelsior Classes and its community which can be important in the cases of familiarizing oneself with a school or even meeting new people. I strongly recommend this class to anyone planning to go into Digital Art or Graphic Design. I really enjoyed this class especially with Carissa Sheehan as my teacher!