I love art. That doesn’t make me particularly good at it, but I have huge appreciation for all forms of artistic endeavors. I’ve always felt it was a vital part of education (lots of research supports the fine motor skills and spatial awareness that comes with art instruction), so in our home education we try to incorporate as much art as possible. I recently had the opportunity to review a sample of See The Light‘s Art Projects series. My goofy kids were sure to love CARTOONING, and I wasn’t wrong!
See The Light has an impressive array of instructors. From their description:
ARTISTS with specialties that include teaching a large variety of techniques, art history, chalk artistry, performance art, gospel chalk art (with black light), crafts, creative lettering, and more;
MUSICIANS whose talents include songwriting, musical performance, arranging, and producing. The SEE THE LIGHT team is dedicated to bringing scripture and biblical principles to viewers in a fresh, engaging way. . . and promising to teach some exciting art skills along the way!
Pat Knepley, art instructor for the Art Class series, and Cartooning, is a wonderful teacher – enthusiastic about her field, full of knowledge about the history and special techniques of the topic, and offers clear step-by-step instructions to complete a project.
As part of a stand-alone series of Art Projects, Cartooning follows the format of teaching art history, elements, and concepts. In this case, Classical Cartooning, Line, , Space and Shape, and Exaggeration and Movement. With a few quick strokes, Pat creates characters out of basic shapes – even numbers! – and turns them into sassy personalities. My kids followed right along, and drew fun, whimsical folks (and even vegetables!) that were every bit as good as the teacher’s samples.
At just over 1 hours, the DVD is a bit too much to take in at one time. Though it is divided into the three segments organizationally, it really needs separate chapters in a menu format so viewers can select only the portion they want to watch. It would be helpful just to have a brief pause or some kind of cue between sections so the CD could be stopped without unknowingly running into the next lesson.
The only negative portion of the lessons was the rather unexpected reading of a bible verse and misapplication of it. Throughout the DVD, a viewer would never guess that it was Christian-based, so to have a bible suddenly appear on the table and be referred to was jarring and not at all integrated into the lesson. Wondering about the naming of all the animals is fine, but the instructor didn’t seem to realize that Adam would not have spoken English, so the current English names we have for animals would not apply to her thoughts about Genesis. My children picked up on this right away, and wished the entire segment had been left out of the lesson.
The instructional quality of the lesson is really wonderful. The recording is easy to see and hear, and we appreciated the split screen aspects and different camera angles so we could see each step of the drawing process. It was a fun, informative art lesson, and left us wanting to see the others in the series.
Just a few of the highlights of See The Light’s CARTOONING:
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Easy to follow, ideal for individual or group instruction
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Affordable - $14.99 for DVD
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Flexible - stop, review, or come back to it at any time
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Multi-Age – rated for ages 5 and up
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Engaging- invites participation and provides instant drawing success
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Fun - helps kids use their imaginations to go beyond the lesson
You can read more experiences right HERE,at SchoolhouseReviewCrew.com, and in the words of Reading Rainbow’s Levar Burton, “Don’t just take my word for it!” Read these other great reviews by parent educators like me!
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