Instructor Stories: Alex Leon
Introduction
Alex Leon isn’t new to Storyteller Academy. He helped Arree with Drawing 1 workshops and Illustration/Art Office Hours all of last year, and students have commented on how helpful his suggestions have been. Alex has also taught drawing, painting, and portfolio development to college and high school level students.
Alex graduated from Art Center College of Design and UC San Diego. His experience at Art Center, as well as his work in the animation and video game industry, has given him a broad perspective of what it takes to succeed in the art industry.
Alex is a painter and a designer with years of experience in the game and animation industry, working with companies such as Warner Bros. Studios, TitMouse Animation, Pixar Animation, BrainZoo Studios, Crowdstar Games, and Red Robot Labs. Movies he’s worked on include: Cars 2 and Scooby Doo. The mobile games he’s worked on include: Life Is Magic and Life Is Crime. He has also worked on a series of fine art gallery paintings.
And this term, I’m excited to take Alex’s brand new Drawing 2: Drawing in 3-D. As you know, I always give away something for these Instructor Stories posts. I was thinking I’d give away a $20 Amazon gift card for this one so that the winner can order art supplies if they want. Or books. Or whatever.
Drawing 2: Drawing in 3-D
This class isn’t just for illustrators. It’s for anyone who wants to learn how to draw with perspective. Alex will teach you how to draw with cubes, cylinders, and spheres.
You’ll start out with everyday objects. Then you’ll explore different strategies for constructing and modifying a cube into more nuanced and complex objects.
In addition to everyday objects and more organic subjects (like the girl pictured above), you’ll learn how to draw vehicles, like cars, trucks, and boats.
And finally, you’ll be learn how to draw characters with backgrounds. In other words, you’ll learn how to place objects and characters in a 1 point perspective grid and in the proper scale. You’ll work with interior and exterior spaces. Camera angles and specific 1 point shots will also be explored.
In the last week, you’ll learn how to do the same thing with a 2 point perspective grid. (For reference, check out the very first drawing in this post.)
And Alex prepared 42 step-by-step daily drawing assignments to help students master the skills you’ll learn in Drawing 2. Drawing a little bit every day has been shown to help artists make progress faster than drawing a lot once a week. These short videos make it easy for you to set aside a few minutes every day to form the habit.
Amazon Gift Card Giveaway Details
To enter the $20 Amazon gift card giveaway, tell me your favorite thing(s) to draw. (I like to draw faces and plants.) For additional entries, you can share this post on social media and post a link to where you’ve shared in the comments (preferably as a comment to your original comment so that all of your entries are grouped together).
If you share your experience of learning from Alex, I’d be happy to give you another entry.
I’ll close the contest at midnight (Pacific Time) on January 25. Thanks for reading and sharing!
Blog Contributors
Myrna Foster writes and edits content for Storyteller Academy and the WriteRiders Newsletter for SCBWI Nevada. She has spent a lot of time teaching and coaching children, including five years as a preschool teacher. She’s also worked as a journalist, and Highlights High Five has published six of her poems.
Arree Chung is an author/illustrator and the founder of Storyteller Academy. Arree’s Ninja! series has received starred reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal. Kirkus also gave a starred review to Mixed, which recently won the FCGB award.
Today Arree lives a creative life, making stories for children. Arree spends most of his time making picture books, writing middle grade novels, and sharing his love for art, design, and storytelling with kids and dreamers everywhere.