While all Middle School students have the opportunity to practice their craft in Visual and Integrated Art classes, a few dedicated souls commit themselves to pursuing great artistic heights in the Art Elective. Different from the regular art classes in that the curriculum stands alone and is partially student-led, the Art Elective is a class in which students can focus on learning technique and skills while making art “for it’s own sake.”


This fall, the Elective artists rapidly developed their drawing skills and chose to concentrate on the genre of landscape and perspective studies. Drawing three-dimensional space realistically on a two-dimensional surface has always been a challenge for artists through the ages. We spent a good deal of time learning the tricks of drawing correctly “in perspective”; many of these skills were developed by such Renaissance masters as Leonardo da Vinci and Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Raphael), so our Turning Point artists are in honorable company! Some of our younger friends may have seen us outside during their playground time, with our drawing boards, practicing our skills by drawing scenes on campus.

We worked on very large landscape studies in oil pastel. Each artist chose a scene outside (of our campus), and took several photographs of their scene to use as visual references. They blocked their compositions first on paper and then spent time drawing their scene carefully, in line only. Then they rendered their pieces, by using the Oil Pastels to build up layers of color, texture, and value in the scenes. Working with oil pastel is like working with oil paint only in a more solid form; to master this technique, students must let go of the idea of “coloring” as they know it, and work their piece in layers much as a painter works a painting. The process can be very challenging and rewarding, and the results are spectacular! As they worked through each phase of their pieces, our artists met in group critiques and gave each other feedback and support.