New curriculum brings art into digital world

Lorain City Schools, in expanding the district’s fine arts offerings to students, has an addition this school year that blends technology and artistry, allowing students to create digital works of art with just as much creativity and originality as any painting or drawing.

The long-term goal is to prepare students for careers in graphic design, communications, website design, and more.

Adobe Photoshop in art class

But, for now, students are learning how programs like Adobe Photoshop have a place in art class.

To truly see how this art concentration can open new doors for artists, look no further than the explosions of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and CryptoArt, which have found a way to monetize art in the digital world.

Some of the most soughtafter digital art pieces have sold for tens of millions.

The district is not ready to put its students’ artwork on the auction block yet, but students already imagine the possibilities.

“If you have an idea for your original artwork, but you can’t figure out how to do it, digital art allows you to enhance your work and really bring your idea to life in a new way,” said Eva Faleer-Solozano, an eighthgrade student, who recently had her painting “Eternal Bliss,” earn an honorable mention in the 2023 Lorain County Region of the Scholastic Art Awards.

Jumping into the fray to help develop this new curriculum for students is longtime Longfellow Middle School art teacher Jackie Murdock.

Digital art is offered to seven- and eighth-grade students as part of art class and is an elective at Lorain

High School. Murdock, who has been

instrumental in guiding students and their artwork

toward success in several local art competitions, said

digital art lives in the same world as a painting, drawing, sculpture, or other visual art composition.

On March 8, Murdock and Artist in Residence Meghann Utrata spent art class helping students not to draw or paint on paper, but scour the internet for copyright-free images that they then uploaded into Photoshop to add to their comprehensive project on an endangered species, she said.

Utrata is an adjunct professor in the Visual Communications Department at Cuyahoga Community College and is a freelance artist and designer.

“Ms. Murdock really paved the way for what I am teaching the students,” Utrata said. “I see a natural progression for her students to get into digital art. They already see the art they create and understand how colors and art mediums work together.

“This is just another layer.”

Utrata said learning to use the programs and technology — students have access to Apple MacBook Pros and Wacom Drawing tablets — is the biggest barrier in the classroom.

“But once students learn and grow, they will just explode,” she said. “That’s when you really see their creativity come out.”

As with many components of Murdock’s art class, student projects are a mix of content areas like English language arts and science.

For example, with their current endangered species project, students selected an endangered species to study, wrote a research paper and created a drawing or painting featuring their selected creature.

Those tangible images have been captured digitally and will be the basis of their digital art projects.

Eighth-grade student Jordan Brown said he doesn’t know what he will create, but he said it would be cool to see his clown fish project in a new way.

Art teacher Jackie Murdock painted the image of a monarch butterfly on the left to show her students how to use original artwork in digital art. The image on the right is her original painting enhanced with Photoshop. Students will do the same using endangered species as the focal point.

SUBMITTED PHOTOS Eighth-grade student Jordan Brown finds images online that he will use in a digital art piece highlighting a clownfish.