Advanced Art Classes

The aspiring professional artist must learn to grapple with outside sources judging something deeply personal to them. In advanced art classes, students are exposed to the challenges of the creative process: the intersection of something robotic like work or school, with the freedom of self expression and their love of artwork.

Senior Fiona McGill has been drawing ever since she could hold a pencil. She started with traditional materials like paint and charcoal before falling in love with digital art. Over her four years at the highschool, McGill has been exposed to many of the nuances of progressing as a student artist.

“I took some of the foundation classes like Drawing Foundations and Painting Foundations. I took Digital Video Production in my first two years, and then last year I took Digital Storytelling which was really fun because I got a lot more freedom in that class. This year, I take AP Art and Design which is really fun because I have near free reign in what I want to do,” McGill said.

In AP Art and Design, like any other AP class, students spend most of the school year preparing for the exam. In this case, the exam is an assessment of a student’s portfolio, the collection of pieces that they make throughout the year.

McGill said AP Art and Design is a challenging class because it requires students to continue building off of their pieces instead of beginning with a new idea for each piece. She described the process as a “sprint towards the end,” where students have to get out as many pieces as possible to have enough to choose from for the final exam.

“It’s intimidating, but it’s nice knowing that at the end of this year I will have one cohesive body of work,” McGill said. “It’s not necessarily my favorite thing in the world, but at the same time I’m really excited to see how it all looks in the end and I think it’s a really good exercise in the long run.”