“Wow wow wow!” is what my students kept hearing me say all semester long. I’m literally so impressed with how skilled these kiddos are!!

Over the summer I’ve been teaching two classes at Nossi called Illustration Materials & Techniques 310, which is a bit of a broad term, but basically it’s an advanced class that teaches how to create enriched background settings. Think the ocean background of ‘Finding Nemo’ or the Wild West cowboy desert scenery in ‘Rango’ or ‘Fievel Goes West’.

It’s a great concept for a class considering how often our art focuses heavily on the foreground objects or characters and the background is simply put in as an afterthought. In this class, students must put forth all their effort in creating a consistent and believable setting atmosphere with no characters at all.

Some of their projects are done digitally and some are created with traditional materials like gouache, acrylic, or even marker and pen. Their final projects all had to be done both ways which made for some great compare-and-contrast class conversations. (The two below are done digitally in the top and with watercolor and marker on the bottom)

I just can’t get over how creative these kids are! Like when the assignment was to create a ‘Celestial’ setting, they’re coming up with spaceships and interstellar Victrola sessions. Just wow!

Some of these scenes really had such a mood! Like this one of the last tree in the universe or a tropical island formed from a shipwreck… I mean those details are incredible!

Two of my favorite aspects of this class though were the brainstorming sessions and the critiques where everyone got to discuss what they liked or struggled with in each assignment, and which materials they liked best. I just love having such small class sizes so we really can have spontaneous and enlightening class conversations. I hope I get to teach this class again in the future!

8.12.2021