My class at the University of the Arts has just concluded and as I mentioned earlier, the final assignment was a dragon. The students come to me with some foundation skills but few keep sketchbooks, and really don't know what their style is yet. They are students. We start first semester working from the figure, drawing then learning the portrait, then monochromatic painting the introduce color. Second semester we learn portrait painting and ease out of that and into an illustration class. I try to sense what they need to do or try and move them into that direction. All the time, I stress the need to marinate their brains in art, movies, literature and the world to come to understand what they WANT to paint or draw. Suddenly, in most cases these students find a voice. If I see a spark I fan it and try to encourage a fire out of them. With this final assignment, I gave them one word, "Dragon" and I could see their faces freeze. A few smiled thinking they won the lottery but soon found out everything has been done before, and doing something special is kind of hard. I want to show some of these young artist a moment here on my Drawger blog. Tim Durning started working traditionally and started to finish his work on the computer. He is using the digital tools well and adds to his drawing without losing the freshness of the ideas or lines.So now I put away all my teaching material and wait until the fall, where I start all over again with a new class of students. It's always hard to train a fighter into a good boxer only to watch them move onto other trainers and bigger fights. Good luck everyone at Uarts!I'm getting a few more images and these are really great too. As a side note, my students are sometimes my models and Lauren has helped me out a few times this year. Here is another student, Lauren Lopilato. She can really draw well and her painting is coming along. She works from her imagination and does really great work.