Homeschool 2.0 » art

Free Tools for the Digital Artist

lynn — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:57:56 +0000

Are you wishing you had $650 for your very own copy of Photoshop? $600 for Illustrator? or $1800 for the entire Adobe Creativity Suite? Are you tempted to turn to pirating? Don’t do it! Here are some tools that will do the job very well, free.

For image editing a la Photoshop try GIMP, a powerful open-source package comparable to its Adobe counterpart. It’s available for Windows, MacOS and Unix and also has extensions to create animations.

Here’s a screenshot of GIMP in action in Windows:

GIMPshop is a modification that gives GIMP a user interface similar to Photoshop. I like their purpose:

My original purpose for GIMPshop was to make the Gimp accessible to the many Adobe Photoshop users out there. I hope I’ve done that. And maybe along the way, I can convert a Photoshop pirate into a Gimp user.

Paint.net is also a favorite at our house. It will do basic image editing.

If you need a vector graphics editor like Illustrator or Corel Draw download Inkscape for Windows, MacOS or Linux. The Inkscape site is built on a wiki and provides great documentation. You can also check out the Open Clip Art Library.

Schmap Adds One of Our Own Pics

lynn — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:21:16 +0000

Schmap.com, a site that mashes Yahoo Maps and Flickr images, recently added one of our daughter’s photos to its collection of images of Town Square Municipal Park in downtown Anchorage. The photo is scanned from a B&W print she developed herself showing ice skaters in front of the Center for the Performing Arts. Higher resolution shows Big Dipper in the right hand corner.

Nice job, Jen!

Draw a Google Doodle and Earn $10K Scholarship

lynn — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:58:12 +0000

Do your kids have an artistic bent? Google is looking for more Doodles for its homepage like the pictures below. There are some great prizes including scholarships and school grants. Details here.

These are Google Doodles for St. Patrick’s Day and Einstein’s birthday.

FUNdamental Art at Home

nardalyn — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:15:26 +0000

Truth be told, our family’s approach to teaching/learning art has been a conglomerate of six-week classes and a smattering of “really cool” art books that I hoped my children would independently thumb through. I am delighted to have hit upon a great resource that takes the teaching/learning of basic art history/theory and practice to the next level! GeeART 16 is an online program of 16 tutorials that are fun to work through and truly educational. While geared for the upper elementary and middle school age group, my 19 year-old son, the aspiring digital animator, hung around in the room while we went through the sample lesson. The program is completely online; your $30 or so buys you the key-code that ‘unlocks’ it AND a copy of Corel Painter Essentials, a way-cool digital art program.

Click here for another Mom’s perspective. Or here for a professional review.

We got our key-code, sketch book and beginner’s guide from Timberdoodle for $28.00 - an excellent deal!