My name is Ms. Rinick. I am an Art Teacher in Florida, near Orlando. I live with with my dog Chewie (little Chewbacca). I love Star Wars, Star Trek and Avatar! In fact I love Syfy! Disney World is 45 minutes from my house and so is the Atlantic Ocean! Cool, huh! I have been teaching Art for about 25 years. I started teaching probably about when your parent was in elementary school, like you are now. I graduated from Nazareth College in Rochester, New York with a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Studio Art in 1983. My concentrations in art were: Illustration, Sculpture; and Printmaking. The next year I went to the State University College at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York to become an art teacher.

When I started teaching Art, there were no computers or software good enough for kids or even serious artists to use. Computers were super expensive, extremely slow and had very small hard drives (memory). Any art that was made on the computer was made by scientists on “super computers“. Only the US government and a few major universities had them. There were no CD’s or DVD’s for computers (or music or movies!). By the way… Your computer now, is much more powerful than those old “super computers”. So, if you had your computer now, back 25 years ago, it would make those “super computers” look like toys! The Internet was not like it is now; again, it was only used by scientists and the government. People like you and me did not even know there was an Internet! There was no email, texting or cellphones! Art was done the “old fashioned way”, like it had been done for hundreds of years. We used paper, pencils, paints, clay and other traditional art stuff!

I first learned how to make art using a computer 15 years ago; that is also when I started to teach a little bit of Digital Art to kids in my regular art classes. This school year, I started teaching Digital Art every day as a regular course at my school for the first time.

I am currently a student at Full Sail University in their Master’s Degree Program, also near Orlando. I am learning how to teach “Digital Kids” (kids who have grown up with computers) by using the computer as a teaching tool. This course is part of my learning! So just like you are learning how to do Digital Art, I am learning how to teach it online to you!

I am a member of: the Florida Art Education Association; the National Art Education Association: the International Society for Technology in Education, and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.

I love making art on the computer; and I love teaching it to kids!