Free Resources from the Net for (Special) Education

At the beginning of June, we celebrated Drawing Day 08 here, and I notice that the countdown to Drawing Day 09 is already under way. When I wrote about Drawing Day 08, I promised to highlight some digital art resources. So, today I’m beginning a series of posts about software and online resources that facilitate the creation and sharing of art. My series of “art posts” will not run all at once. Over the next while, as I find time, I intend to “test-drive” and then write about several digital art options.

There are countless people, myself included, who for a variety of reasons are better able to create art with a computer than with actual brushes or pencils or paint or charcoal or any other concrete materials. I believe we have a responsibility to make as many options as possible available to the learners we support. This is the only way we can ever hope to facilitate success, help develop effective skills, build competence, and encourage confidence in ALL the learners we support. We often do the opposite when we insist that children use tools that just don’t work for them!

Pencil is powerful free software by Pascal Naidon and Patrick Corrieri. They sum up what they offer as follows:

Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.

Pencil’s user interface offers a sophisticated range of drawing, painting, layering, and animation tools that far exceed my own artistic aptitude. At the same time, the user interface is straightforward and intuitive. If my skills were better developed, I’m confident that I would have no difficulty using the available tools.

It is worth noting that you can import scanned images that you have created on paper. You can also export your work as flash or Quicktime movies. This provides convenient options for sharing your work as you see fit–both online and otherwise.

Pencil appears to be well written software that continues to be developed. It has been updated as recently as April, 2008. It downloaded and installed flawlessly on my Windows laptop. Clear documentation is available on the Pencil website in the form of a user manual. A user forum is also hosted there.