Paint it!

Overview

In this activity, students express themselves by using colours and graphic patterns to paint images based on the story they’ve read. They could even work with drawings they’ve created previously. By using Sumo Paint, a free image editor with an easy-to-use online interface, students will perfect the visual description of characters and settings from the story.

Description

To begin the activity, students will need existing illustrations based on the elements of a familiar story. These can be drawings created by the students in a previous task (see Station 1) or they can use digital images/sketches taken from the book. Once they have all the illustrations together, analyse them with the whole class and discuss ways in which they can manipulate the graphics in order to give a new artistic impression.

Go online to Sumo Paint and show the class the application. Focus on the tools that they might need to come up with the desired effects. Divide the students into small groups and give them some time to explore the app. Assign the main task of painting the illustration that they have chosen to edit.

At the end, save the work to a computer and ask students to show their work to the class. Ask them to compare the painted/edited version with the original and guide them through an analysis of the effects or colours used. Save all the files so they can be used in further activities.

Time needed 2 hours.

Resources

Internet access.
Previously created illustrations (by the students or others).
Access to Sumo Paint – http://www.sumopaint.com/start/.

Hints and tips

Ensure that the story is available to them as they work on their paintings. They should keep going back to it whenever they need to clarify something or make a creative choice of which they are unsure.
If you do this as a single activity, you can gather all the work in a “before and after” slideshow and even ask students to include in each slide the name of the techniques used.
If students are editing illustrations created by others AND publishing these on line, ensure that they adhere to the appropriate creative commons licences.

Change here for