ESP Biography

Drawing is awesome, especially in grades 5-9, where you've got a lot of free time during classes where you can pretend to be taking notes and years to practice making comics and drawing dragons. :) This is a moderately technical class: We'll cover some anatomy and functional bio-mechanics that might help you draw animals, buildings, and human faces and bodies more comfortably. I'll also go over some basic art techniques if there's interest, but hopefully what you'll get out of this class should be neatly portable in your brain, not on paper. We're going to be sketching on whiteboards and on normal typing paper. This is not about copying photos or about showing off, so come ready to learn from other students and have fun. :) The second half of the class will be improv sketch jamming, which means everyone swapping drawing helping each other out, or working on a huge whiteboard mural together.

Drawing is awesome. It's also really, really hard to do well when you have specific ideas in mind that you want to communicate to others, and aren't just copying the light and dark areas of a photo (a computer can do that: www.psykopaint.com). You can't express yourself articulately in a written language without hundreds of hours of practice...why would drawing be any different? This is a technical class. We'll cover some anatomy and functional bio-mechanics that might help you draw animals, buildings, and human faces and bodies more comfortably. I'll also go over some basic art techniques if there's interest, but hopefully what you'll get out of this class should be neatly portable in your brain, not on paper...also, don't get frustrated: pick up two or three ideas here, and then see if they help when you're drawing a week from now. We're not solving solving a puzzle once, we're trying to learn how to continuously improve. This is a class about social interaction (it's okay, introverts, breath, it'll be alright.) We're going to be sketching on whiteboards and on normal typing paper. This is not a class about making a single charcoal portrait to take home or about impressing anyone, so come ready to learn from other students and have fun. Practicing how to give and receive functional constructive critiques on your work and the work of others is really crucial to improving skills, so we're going to do a lot of it over the second half of the class...which will be improv sketch jamming, which means everyone swapping drawing helping each other out, or working on a huge whiteboard mural together.

We will start with Trogdor, and move on from there. This course will cover how to draw everything from a nudibranch to a horse, probably roughly following a cladogram left over in my head from 2006. I'm going to talk a lot and wave dry erase markers around. You get to draw during class. Everyone wins!

Let’s get our granny on and make some mini stuffed animals! We’ll cover the basics of designing and building a wire armature that will make our creatures poseable. Drafting patterns will be discussed as we cut, sew, and stuff a skin to put on our wireframe. Finally, we'll embellish our critters out with beads, embroidery, and crazy tufts of hair using needle felting. Students will get to take home their mini monster at the end of the class.

Come now, everyone tells you that juggling is a life skill, but most of them have lost track of their metaphor. In this course, we'll teach you how to make a set of juggling balls out of easy to find materials, and we'll show you the simple steps that will have you juggling in no time. Anyone can learn; no prior experience or especial coordination is required. By the end of this class, you'll be well on your way to juggling ninjutsu, and you can take your juggling balls home so as to hone your skills!

If you're already set on how to throw and catch, the next best thing is to throw and catch in large groups. This is a course for those who are already comfortable enough with a three-ball pattern that they would like to learn passing tricks. You can also just come to show off, swap tricks, and hang out and practice hard throws in a juggling-supportive environment. If you'd like to bring your own props, please do!

We’ll discuss designing and illustrating monsters from an evolutionary and ecological point of view. This class is for anyone interested in animals and art, whether you're already carrying six sketchbooks or just want an introduction to thinking about creature design.