by Ted Sherman

Created on: June 22, 2008

I do fun art projects for both teens and way-beyond-teens. After a long career as a graphic artist and big company advertising department manager, I've become a volunteer instructor at our city's largest community center. I teach two art classes each on three days a week. One group, my 10 to 11 am session, is composed of 20 seniors, all age 65 and up. The other, my 4 to 5 pm session, is with 20 teens and pre-teens, ages 10 to 16.

When classes start at the beginning of my 12-week courses, my teaching is the same for both groups. I begin with basic drawing using pencil, pen, charcoal and pastel. We use students and volunteers from the center's sports programs as costumed models, and the emphasis for my students is on drawing techniques, composition, light/shade, color, perspective and understanding of how art is an integral part of everything.

Then, after four weeks, while my seniors continue to perfect their skills with the basic tools, my classes for the teens go off in another direction, to explore the limitless resources of the computer, art software and cyberspace. Through the community center's contributors and a kindly Apple dealer, we've acquired 20 reconditioned iMac computers. Our budding artist teens create most of their art on the iMacs. We use Adobe PhotoDeluxe, iPhoto, Mac PhotoStudio and other software programs for artists and graphic designers.

For my teens, I choose computer art projects that fit in with their current lives, with my attention focused on their potential for majoring in art in college and for careers ahead. One project is to produce a weekly online newsletter, which includes items from world happenings as well as events going on in the community center. They create two editions, one a four-page tabloid that is printed and distributed to the 30,000 member families of the community center. In addition to editorial copy, it contains art, photography and creative combinations of both.

The other edition, with the aid of several video cameras and hand-held cell-phone-video devices, is an online-only edition. My students roam the community center and elsewhere with cameras, capturing video of sports events, music presentations, city scenes and various classroom happenings. They also search the daily online news, entertainment and political sites for short videos to include in their composition. Then, with video editing and art software, they create their weekly online program.

No matter how sophisticated the equipment my teens use to produce their print and video work, I always remind them that the basis of their high-tech artwork is still rooted in the classics. I emphasize that guidelines were created long ago by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and all the other great artists who set the high standards of excellence we still follow today.

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