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Making Art Your Own Teacher's Page

Overview

There are many sources of beautiful art work on the World Wide Web. Three of the best are the Museum of Modern Art, the Louvre, and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Students enjoy looking at these sites, but by combining the World Wide Web and a graphics program, students can make the art their own.

In this activity, students will start by browsing the collections of the three museums listed above. When they find something they like, they'll copy it onto their local computer. To copy a picture from the Web, they take the following steps:

• Put the cursor in the middle of the picture to be copied
• Hold the mouse button down (a pop-up menu will appear)
• Slide the mouse up one choice to "Save a copy as. . ." and release the mouse
• A "Save. . ." dialog box will come up, just like in ClarisWorks. Students can find their own folder, give the picture a name, and choose Save

From the pictures they've copied (if you spend a period looking at the sites, most students will copy at least half a dozen), students will select one or two which they can add their own touch to.

Adobe PhotoShop will allow students to change the color scheme, alter the size, and use graphic tools to put themselves into the picture. Expect to spend at least a period working with PhotoShop.

When students have gotten their pictures in finished form, they can use HomePage to put the pictures up on the Web for others to see. Alternatively, you could create an on-line gallery of student work, which anyone with an Internet connection could see from home.