adventures behind every easel!

Lessons developed to create interest, inspire creativity, teach foundations, increase art appreciation and raise the level of critical thinking, we
believe all our students are capable of -- at the East Side Center for the Arts, the definition of "talent" is – learning, repeatedly practicing,
and putting to use the fundamentals of art skills. All of this is accomplished with a sense of success and great time in class!

A six week study learning to create a garden as they observe vs. what the know a flower should look like.

The students started by creating a marker drawing of a flower, as guessed all the flower and single petals and a green stem. We then worked outside with assorted media observing different light to see how colors and the lights/darks actually created flower shapes since petals are mostly varied.

With their new found understanding of how to mass shapes and create atmosphere, they built a garden on a background that was created to showcase all of their flowers.

This is a tough lesson for an adult to learn and the kids really got off to a great start!

After completing a oil painting of a single egg still life--an intense study focusing on value an color theory--the high school students were ready for the challenge of working with their acquired skills and apply them literally to themselves!

Shown is their progress of self portraits, (unfortunately, we could not get all in the photograph and you may notice some distortion).

Before painting started during class, we worked from observation with an actual model so they could see the difference of working from life vs. photo reference and lots of mirrors.

Above you will see their completed grisailles on toned canvas. Working from reference and their own images they have started to notate their values and color.