Sasha and I are starting a new art project. I’m going to teach him the basics of the Adobe Illustrator drawing program to draw every letter of the alphabet. I think the educational benefits will be numerous:

• he’ll get to practice some elementary computers skills, such as opening applications, saving documents, etc.
• he’ll practice using the mouse to grasp objects, resize windows, and select from pull-down menus
• he’ll learn about typography and fonts (every day we’ll use a different font)
• he’ll be introduced to some more advanced drawing techniques (e.g. shading, shadowing, extruding/beveling, applying filters… the list goes on)
• he’ll get to practice his alphabet in a fun and interactive way while learning some 21st-century art techniques

When we’re done we’ll be able to combine the whole lot into a nice picture suitable for display on our refrigerator!

The letter A

Sasha wanted to start with, appropriately, the letter A. This A is colored orange, is extruded/beveled to give it a 3D appearance, and has a drop shadow that implies overhead lighting. Sasha picked the Comic Sans MS font for his first alphabet creation.

Media: Apple iMac, Adobe Illustrator drawing software

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Computer art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.