We Finally Start Our Graphics Project.

Third Period, Ali Shore, my teacher is here to observe me. I talked with her ahead of time in the hallway. I am preparing to do my Graphic Art introductory lecture. I was worried. I had a feeling that the kids wouldn't be willing to follow along and that everything would go straight downhill.

I started the class with a song. I had put together a PowerPoint presentation that started with the song "The Eye of the Hurricane," by David Wilcox. I have liked this song for a long time. It is pretty emotional, being about a young woman who hides from her lousy life by riding a rocket bike really fast, especially in the rain. One night, as she speeds along, a truck pulls out in front of her. She tries to swerve away, but hits the truck and dies. The song was written as an analogy for addiction and I think that it works very well. But I wasn't sure about the class.

They listened. They understood.

We talked about the song for about 20 minutes or so. We talked about the woman and her life. We talked about riding to forget. We talked about getting away and being depressed. We talked about dying.

Then we talked about painting a picture of the song.

What colors would the painting be? What elements would be included in the picture? What feelings would the painting show?

The kids did a wonderful job of analyzing the song. I was proud of them.

Then, I told them about our Graphics Project. They are to use our Graphics program, Fireworks, to illustrate a song, remake an album cover or a movie poster, or anything else that inspires them. When I told them that their completed projects would be used to make a new "Computer Graphic Art Gallery" in our Computer Lab, they were excited.

We then spent the rest of the class going over a gallery of Computer Graphic Art that I had assembled from the Internet. The kids were great, analyzing, critiquing, commenting. It went really well.

Tomorrow, I give the same lecture for the 2nd Period class. I will be interested to see how it goes in that class.

On Thursday, we start our project.

Yeah!