What holds you back from teaching digital painting? (Bonus: A killer first digital lesson)

 

Problem: Your students' digital paintings look flat, cartoony, over-blended. Maybe because you don't like the look of it, you avoid teaching digital art. Big mistake. Your kids need to understand digital art, and they need your support.

Solution: Teach your kids the Joon Ahn Technique to inject texture into their digital art.

2-3 class periods for 10th, 11th, or 12th:

If I'm not teaching digital art to my students because I'm not confident with Procreate/Photoshop, I need to get this knowledge gap handled ASAP. Maybe I try justifying my lack of digital-painting know-how by telling myself, 

My kids spend too much time on screens, so I should be teaching them cyanotype and decoupage—they're healthy escapes from toxic screentime.

But I know this rationalization doesn't really hold up. That's because after they've made cyanotypes in art class, our students go home and digital paint stuff like this . . .

. . . and good for them. They're making art. Yet, it's a shame that this line-centric style is all they know. Manga-style art isn't wrong, except as I said, IT'S THE ONLY WAY THEY KNOW HOW TO DIGITAL PAINT. 

So their art teachers have a responsibility to load more, better tools into their toolboxes.

_____

To teach digital arts, I need these materials for each student: (1) iPads with Procreate, (2) Apple Pencils or equivalent. 

Currently, I run this with an art CCA because we don't have enough iPads to accommodate a full class of 20+. (At CCA, most students bring their own iPads, and those without iPads can borrow from the school.) 

This could also work for AP or IBDP students who want to generate high-scoring artwork at warp-speed.

The student starts by painting her work in 3-4 values as you see above. Just white, grey, and black (or white, 30% grey, 60% grey, black). Eventually, she'll want each value on its own layer. 

But painting different values on different layers is confusing and counterintuitive, so let's assume the student finishes the 3-value painting above on just a single layer. No worries, she can easily separate them with the automatic selection tool as shown in <this> video:

Select everything white first (this takes a while). Then, while all whites are selected, make new layer, and use a massive hardround brush to paint everything white. Do the same to put all blacks on a new layer. The grey layer is just whatever's left.

The next step is to replace all dark pixels with this pattern (or equivalent): 

Replace all white pixels with this (or equivalent):

And all grey pixels with a grey texture (not pictured). 

Here's how she achieves the replacements: make the light pattern a <clipping mask> attached to the white layer. Make the dark pattern a clipping mask attached to the dark layer. Attach a mid-value pattern to the greys.

Finally, she can continue painting with whatever colors—this on a layer set to multiply when she's darkening, and a layer set to screen when she's lightening.

Result:

What I've just laid out is a challenging process, and approximately 25 secondary students on the planet presently know how to do it. It's an advanced technique, yet it's within the grasp of 10s, 11s, and 12s. I know this because I've taught HS students how to do it, and in fact, the student work shown here was done by 9s.

After years of practice, if they stick with it, they'll push this technique to a Joon Ahn level. Check it out:

Joon Ahn's using the same technique my students were doing, but with a half decade more of painting experience informing his brushwork, colors, and composition. The journey starts with the 2.5-day microlesson in this post. You have a responsibility to show them that manga-style line art is not the only way.