If you stopped by VVA on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon, you might be surprised at the various sorts of creative art projects the high-school student are working on under the direction of Art Teacher (and Preschool Teacher) Miss Mary. Their first major project was drawing self portraits using only pencils. Ninth grader Aidan Miller explains, “we started by dividing a printed photo of ourselves into a grid. Then we drew a another grid on white paper. We completed the self portraits by shading each grid box on the white paper to match the corresponding grid box on the printed photo. I really enjoyed the slow and steady pace of this project. It was extremely fulfilling when we completed each square and finally saw the end result.” Currently, the students are working on stop-motion projects. Ninth grader Matthew Crowson explains, “First, we wrote a story. Then, we broke that story down into small scenes and then into smaller individual movements to photograph. Using drawings, legos, and digital images from a video game, we created over 2,000 individual pictures. These pictures will be loaded into a stop-motion computer program which will rapidly combine the pictures into a movie.” ~ Julie Reagan
