Art Connects Us Art School

dianne tennyson vincent

We had a great time at the end of the year celebration for The Promise School. Here are some photos of our student's work in the display set up for parents and relatives.

Here are photos of the self-portraits our students did at The Promise School. This astonishing array of work/approaches came from simple collage materials, crayons, markers and pastels. What fun!

Here we are working with our students at The Promise School. I'm showing the students a sketchbook where I did copywork of an illustrator I particularly like (Chris Riddell) and explaining how copywork can be beneficial for introducing fresh ideas and new approaches to your work. Next you see the Drawing Machine- a framed sheet of glass placed in front of objects you want to draw. You trace on the glass with a marker with one eye closed and trick your brain into thinking you can touch what you see with your pencil, developing your eye-hand coordination and responsiveness to the object/image.

Students hard at work. Here, two young ladies engage in traditional copy work. We compare the text of the story with that artist's interpretation of the text, noting how he chose to solve the various problems a good illustrator must contend with to create satisfying story art. The next step would be to create your OWN interpretation of the work, addressing issues like page design and image composition, color scripting, historical or costume/period research, appropriate technique, and line of action/gesture/rhythm.
Third photo is good old life drawing- just plopping it down and rendering the object to the best of your ability, and absolute necessity for anyone interested in creating fantasy art. If you don't understand how the real world works, you can't create a convincing fantasy world.

Here's a drawing from Moyu Yamaguchi, one of our students we helped get into the School of the Arts when she was a sixth-grader. Now she's in high school taking AP art. Her assignment was to do a self-portrait using fantasy hair. So proud of her!

One of very talented students, Hope McLure, age 11 just finished her first oil painting. She's really amazing! So proud of her!