Shape is one of the seven basic building blocks of art along with Line, Form, Texture, Value, Space, and Color. Using still life paintings of fruit, we look into how artists' create their individual style and develop a unique approach to making shapes.

Check out the entire collection of KQED Art School videos!

Space is one of the seven basic building blocks of art along with Line, Form, Shape, Value, Color, and Texture. Using site specific art as a starting point, we highlight the techniques that artists use to control and manipulate space in their work.

Texture is one of the seven basic building blocks of art along with Line, Form, Shape, Value, Space, and Color. Here we look at the how visual artists try to stimulate our sight and our other senses through different textures. They create something that we can see and feel or imagine the feeling of and try to engage us in that way as well. Learn how different textures (and implied textures) convey different feelings here.

Check out the entire collection of KQED Art School videos!

Value is one of the seven basic building blocks of art along with Line, Form, Shape, Color, Space, and Texture. Through the lens of black and white photography, we look at how artists produce value scales and contrast, and how different kinds of lines change the way we perceive depth and space. Learn how different values can invoke different emotions in this video.

Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor creates poignant, larger-than-life figures that are seemingly cobbled together with reused scrap materials including wood, textiles and newspaper.

Designed for middle and high school teachers, we’ll consider how to tackle misinformation, how to analyze digital media, and why it’s important for your students. Robert Costa is the Moderator of Washington Week, the Peabody Award-winning weekly news analysis series on PBS. Costa is also a full-time national political reporter for The Washington Post, where he covers Congress and the White House and regularly travels the country to meet with voters and elected officials.

Led by PBS Digital Innovator All Star Leigh Herman and PBS Station Representative Mary Anne Lane this session highlights exciting resources and models that you can immediately implement in your classroom.

Prioritizing fun, engaging and accessible tools for your students, the series will highlight techniques for analyzing media, and amplifying student voice through authentic storytelling.

Linda Black Elk is passionate about plants. Linda Black Elk is an ethnobotanist and professor of ethnobotany and science education at Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, North Dakota and recently she traveled to the Cansayapi Oyate (the Lower Sioux Indian Community) to share her knowledge of medicinal plants with students there.

Two lesson plans for grades 9-12 are included as gallery assets and in the Support Materials.

Artist Evah Fan makes drawings, zines and more in a style that is influenced by wordplay and folk art techniques. She tells visual stories through her interpretation of words she finds tantalizing with their multiple meanings. She emphasizes that style is not a skill that can be found overnight, but rather developed over years and realized in retrospect.

How do you make artwork that is conceptual? Artist Robb Godshaw uses technical means to move things that can’t be moved, or make visible things that aren’t normally visible. Watch as Godshaw scavenges electronic waste during an artist residency at SF Recology.

The forces of fate and free pull at Romeo and Juliet’s relationship throughout the play, and it is up for debate whether fate or free will plays a larger role in the tragic events that unfold in their story. Examine the balcony scene to see how these forces are already at play from the very beginning of their relationship in this video from Great Performances: Romeo and Juliet.

In this video from August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand scholars discuss Fences, the Tony Award-winning drama about a former Negro League baseball player and his family. The video features performances of two scenes from the play along with critical commentary.

Sensitive: This resource contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Teachers should exercise discretion in evaluating whether this resource is suitable for their class.

David Huffman is a Bay Area artist who heavily uses basketballs and astronauts as symbols of African Americans' cultural trauma and historical homelessness. He uses these two specifically because they serve as metaphors for self-discovery in a place that has been previously hostile. Basketball is a sport that connects cultural divides, and the astronaut suit protects those who are venturing into dangerous places in order to see things they have never seen before.

Learn about the trailblazing, gender non-conforming performer Gladys Bentley with this digital short from Unladylike2020. Gladys Bentley fled her homophobic Trinidadian immigrant family in Philadelphia, PA at age 16 to join New York's Harlem Renaissance jazz scene as a cross-dressing performer. In a time when homosexuality was widely considered sinful and deviant, Bentley wore men's clothing -- a tuxedo and top hat -- and became famous for her lesbian-themed lyrics covering popular tunes of the day, and for openly flirting with women in the audience. In the 1950s, succumbing to pressure from the black church and McCarthy Era harassment of the LGBTQ community, Bentley said of her gender identity, "I am a woman again!" Constantly reinventing herself, Bentley challenged norms and pushed boundaries. Support materials include discussion questions, vocabulary, a research project on queer identity during the Harlem Rennaissance, and a close reading of Bentley's famous essay, "I am a Woman Again".

Ever wondered how comics are made? How about how to draw your own? In this video, Thien Pham, a graphic artist from Oakland, CA, will show you step-by-step how to create your own comic, from writing the plot to drawing the four-panel itself.

Follow along as artist Sirron Norris demonstrates how to draw various emotions on cartoon faces. See how subtle changes make a big difference when expressing emotion through art.

John “Crazy Legz” Pearson, founder of the Who Got Moves Battle League, is breathing life back into Beat Ya Feet -- the bouncy, fast-moving dance found in the streets, backyards and go-go clubs of Black D.C. At the heart of the dance style is the music: go-go, a blend of funk, call-and-response and Afro-Latin rhythms, ubiquitous in D.C.'s Black neighborhoods.

Honolulu is home to tourism hotspot Waikiki, and many of the city’s beachfront hotels host lavish luaus showcasing styles of hula influenced by Western music and instrumentation. But for Native Hawaiians, the origins of hula are deeply spiritual and rooted in Hawaii’s creation stories and the history and culture of their kūpuna or ancestors. Driven by the mele (poetry), hula marries movement with spoken word to express stories about specific deities, people, places and events.

Jocquese Whitfield is a Vogue legend in San Francisco. He is a choreographer and performer who teaches the popular “Vogue and Tone” class at Dance Mission Theater. He has held the winning title at the Miss Honey Vogue Ball multiple times and is also a judge for dance and drag competitions. Here Jocquese breaks down the five elements of Vogue and discusses how the dance form became a lifestyle. Learn the basics from this master also known as Sir JoQ.

In this video from American Masters | Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, learn about the lasting impact of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and why it’s such an important piece of American literature. Students answer discussion questions, analyze text from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and write a short essay to gain a deeper understanding of Angelou’s work and why it’s so impactful.

Explore how young theater directors benefit from mentoring in this video from Treasures of New York: The Drama League. Each year a cohort of fellows are selected to receive professional training as part of The Drama League’s Directors Project. Students hear advice from experienced theater professionals and are encouraged to think about the kind of preparation required for a career in the theater.