Anime and Manga Classes with Chesterfield Libraries

Since January 2013, I have been teaching some Anime and Manga drawing workshops with Chesterfield County Public Libraries. The classes were offered occasionally throughout the year on Saturdays as part of the Libraries' Teen Studio Program. The library and I provided all materials to students for the program.

These classes have also led to other opportunities like teaching at the Chesterfield Library Comic Con Events and being a guest artist/teacher at Meadowbrook High School's Anime Club.

 So far, I have taught 4 installments of the Classes covering different aspects of the topic.

The first class was Introduction to Manga and Anime. This class mainly covered how to draw faces, and figures in the Anime style. I also covered drawing facial expressions, mouths, hands, feet, clothes, and hair. Students used the information and techniques I taught them to draw their own Anime/Manga character. I taught students how to transfer drawings using carbon paper and how to finalize characters through inking. I provided various inking materials and techniques for them to experiment with including India ink, brushes, brush pens, multi-liner/micron pens, etc. I also taught a short version of this lesson at the 2013 Chesterfield Comic Con Event, which covered how to draw the face in the Anime style.

 

Ad for Intro to Manga and Anime Classes in the library's magazine

The second set of classes explored Character Design. I taught students how to use a matrix/chart to get unlimited ideas for characters, personalities, costumes, and environments. The matrix technique was from a book called The Manga Matrix by Hiroyoshi Tsukamoto. (This book is an absolutely awesome reference to have! I brought a copy to class so everyone could take a look at it.) In addition to the matrix, I reviewed how to draw the face and figure, taught how to draw unique characters from a basic shapes, body proportions for realistic vs unrealistic style characters, character variation, using a silhouette to check the strength of a character design, and inking.

Postcard Ad for Character Design Classes

 The third installment of the classes dealt with How to Make a Manga. First, I quickly reviewed how to draw a face, the figure, and character design. The main topics covered on making a manga included layout, panels, speech/word bubbles, font, sound and line effects, black and white vs. color in manga, planning and process of making a manga, publishing/sharing a manga, and inking. I had two exercises built into the lesson for students to try their hand at story telling, paneling, and speech bubbles.

Ad for How to Make a Manga Classes

My most recent class discusses How to Draw Chibi Anime and Manga Characters. In this lesson, I discuss what a chibi is, the characteristics of chibi's, body proportions, chibi characters vs regular anime characters, and how to draw a chibi. For drawing chibi's, I covered the face, eyes, bodies, mouths, facial expressions, hands, feet, clothes and hair. I taught this lesson at Meadowbrook High School recently and I will also be teaching it at this year's Chesterfield Comic Con Event on March 22nd from about 10:30-11:30.

Ad for 2014 Chesterfield Comic Con Event

These classes are so much fun! The students really seem to love them. We often talk about the anime they lik and even play some clips and songs from their favorite shows at the end of class. I love getting to see their drawings, they are really talented artists!

Bubble Printing at the Science Museum of Virginia

On New Year's Eve 2013, I got the chance to teach a bubble painting lesson for Art on Wheels at the Science Museum of Virginia. The museum was having a New Year's Event and dropping the "ball" at 12 noon, for children (they would most likely be asleep at 12 midnight). The ball drop was actually 2014 bouncy balls from a balcony, it was pretty cool. It was a really fun family event!

Bubble Printing

For the bubble printing lesson I mixed tempera paint, dish soap, and water to get

the paint the right consistency. Many parents wanted to know the recipe for it, but it is mainly trial and error. Start with about a silver dollar sized amount of paint, fill in water to about half of paint cup, add in a few squirts of soap and stir (it is pretty watery). To test if it is right, you have to blow bubbles with a straw and press paper to the bubbles to make a test print. If the mixture is not bubbling enough, it needs more soap. If the paint is too thick for bubbles, it needs more water. Lastly, if the print comes out too light, then more paint is needed. It is a messy project, so have some table covers handy!

To get started, each person gets their own straw to use, for sanitary reasons. They could take their straw from color to color. Color mixing from putting the straw in different paints was minimal. Children blew bubbles into the paint bowls using the straw, until the bubbles were over the edge of the cup. While the bubbles were still high, the participants would press their paper on top of the bubbles to make a print. The process was repeated for different colors and bubble sizes. To get different sized bubble prints, I had different sized paint bowls. Some also dripped paint on their paper and then blew it around the paper with the straws to make a design. 

Two safety reminders for children were to:  

     1. Only blow OUT with the straws- A few really young kids forgot and sucked in, resulting in             a mouthful of paint. Luckily, there was a water fountain nearby to rinse in. For really young 

         ones, I suggested that an adult or older child make the bubbles for them and they press the paper

         for the print.

     2. Take a breath- Blowing hard on the straws too long can make kids lightheaded, remind them to 

         take a breath every now and then. I didn't have this happen to anyone, but it is something to 

         remind them of just in case.

Here are some pics of the event and some of the students' work. Enjoy!

Blowing bubbles in paint cup

Color stations: Spread out the colors to give easy access

Blowing paint drips with straws

Making prints

Blowing bubbles above the rim

Student work on drying table

More student work

Even more student work

Art On Wheels

I was very fortunate to have a new teaching opportunity over the past year. It was working with a company called Art on Wheels. They are awesome!!! Basically they bring art classes to various groups in Virginia. These groups can be for children or adults at schools, churches, community centers, hospitals, local events, etc. The teacher brings all the supplies to the location, so all participants have to do is come in. I have been teaching a few regular art classes with the company over the Fall and on into this year. If you would like to learn more about Art on Wheels, visit their website at http://www.artonwheels-va.org/ .

I have two new classes this year, teaching creative painting to adults at the Cancer Institute at Reynolds Crossing and the St. Francis Cancer Institute. I will post more from them throughout the year.

Two of my Fall classes have been geared toward teaching adults with disabilities; one class at a local church and one at a historical location called the Walkerton Tavern. (Beautiful building if you get the chance to visit. It used to be a field hospital during the Civil War.) These classes tend to have between about 6-13 participants, so that allows for more one on one time. I love this because it gives me a chance to get to know the participants and help them with different aspects of projects as needed.

So far, we have done tissue paper collage, plaster casting, clay bowls, and marionettes.  

Here are a few photos from some of the Fall classes, the project was creating a tissue paper collage of a river scene over two class meetings. It was fun to see their different approaches. I had a few people who would take their time and tear their paper deliberately into smaller pieces and plan their landscape out. I also had a few who were more interested in the collage process and went more abstract with their designs. I had participants make a collage of their choice if they finished early, and had time for another piece. (It is always best to have a few back up lessons handy in case you have some fast workers. I started carrying paper and colored pencils as an additional back up.) The participants were really excited to work on one of their choice at the end because they could involve their interests. I had one student who wanted to make Ninja Turtles, so I brought in a reference and showed him how to draw the characters. Another student mentioned wanting to make a Whammy character from an 80's game show called Press Your Luck. She got so excited when I told her she could and I would help her to make the character! I pulled up a video and pic of the character and we used that as a reference. Several other students wanted to do Halloween pictures for theirs. Theses classes were a lot of fun to teach and everyone really enjoyed them!

 In some of the pictures you might see some aids (church class) or volunteers (Tavern class). These lovely ladies are all absolutely wonderful!! They clearly love working with the participants and really enjoy what they do. They were a big help during these classes!

Church Class:

 

Walkerton Tavern Class:

Animal Twists - Photoshop Lesson for Art I

Time for another update!  (This will be a long one.)

This lesson is another favorite from my Student Teaching days, this time at Hermitage High School (Go Panthers!). The idea was to create animal hybrids using Photoshop. These hybrids were to be convincingly merged to make the animal believable. Students had to combine at least 2 animals and add in two textures, so they were blending a minimum of 4 photos. I aimed it at Art I students, who are generally all in the 9th grade. I also had the opportunity to teach this lesson to 8th grade level Art I students, while I was board subbing at Tuckahoe Middle School.

Demo Model : Bear-Frog made with bear, frog, turtle, moss, and dirt photographs

I had several goals for the lesson. The first, was to give students a basic understanding of Photoshop and photo-manipulation. I wanted students to understand that Photoshop could be used as a tool to make unique pieces of art.  Some of the big topics we covered along the way included: using royalty free images vs. copyrighted images, photo-manipulation vs. photo-merge, raster vs. vector based programs, and resolution and its relation to image size. In addition to those main topics, there were specific aspects and tools in the Photoshop program that were necessary to learn including opacity, layers, the clone stamp tool, selection tools, hue/saturation, eraser, blur, burn, dodge, and move tools. 

A note on copyright in regards to this project, it is a biggie! Students were required to use either photos they had taken themselves or royalty free photos (photos that did not need to be paid for). Most websites with royalty free photos only required the user to give credit to the source to use the image (I checked the usage policies on several sites and gave students an approved list of websites they could use). To meet this requirement, students had to fill out a citation list and turn it in with their final project. Copyrighted images were NOT allowed, as that would be copyright infringement and plagiarism. This was a learning experience for many students. Several wanted to use images from movies or comic characters and I actually walked them through how to check if an image was copyrighted, by checking for watermarks and copyright info at the bottom of web pages. As a general rule all movie, art, and comic images were a no-go because they all were sure to be copyrighted. I also had to make sure they clicked and went to the original webpage to cite their source, a ton of students tried to put Google.com or Google Images as their source.

Needless to say, there was a lot to cover and this was a multi-week lesson. It was a process of taking what they learned the previous class and building on it as we went, so all the information was spread out over the classes and easy for students to absorb.

I created step-by-step tutorial handouts for students to reference while they worked (complete with screenshots) and I did several demonstrations. The first demo, was just showing how the tools worked and students had a Practice Assignment to basically try out the tools. After that, I gave a demo on how to merge animals and textures (See Bear-Frog above^^). I  made the photos I was using available for them to follow along with me. Two things to note with Photoshop whether you are teaching it or using it yourself: the best way to learn it is to use it hands-on (not just read or listen about it) and there are many different ways to do the same operation or effect (like using menus or hot keys, etc.).

Here are some student examples!

Red Panda Shape Collage - 1st Grade

Here is a lesson I did with my 1st graders at Twin Hickory Elementary during Student Teaching. The main idea was to teach the students that objects or animals can be created from basic shapes that are put together. 

Red Panda

Our animal that we learned about was the red panda. Since most students were unfamiliar with the animal, I showed them photos, we read an article about red pandas from Ranger Rick Magazine, and I showed the classes a short video of red pandas playing in the snow - the students thought they were hilarious and the class erupted into giggles : ). I also tied red pandas to things the students were familiar with, like mentioning that Master Shifu from Kung Fu Panda was a red panda. The animal really clicked with them!

Master Shifu from Kung Fu Panda

Here are some of the student's red pandas, they were able to add so much character by the way they assembled their animals and the details they drew on at the end. This was such a fun lesson!