Painting with Pixels

Upper School students in Stephanie Teo’s Digital Painting and Design class put a contemporary spin on a classic still life assignment. Influenced by 17th century Dutch memento mori paintings to Frida Kahlo’s Viva La Vida Watermelons to Patrick Caulfield’s Pottery, students selected objects that represent different parts of their identity—sharing a glimpse into who they are through the things they use. Using a limited color palette, they were challenged to simplify their objects in a graphic manner. 

Later in the course, students selected a specific emotion as a jumping off point for designing an original character. Inspired by Pixar’s Inside Out and Expressionist portraits, Upper School artists created a character sheet, which is a design brief that visually tells the viewer about their personality and a general sense of what the character looks like and how they behave.

Digital Painting and Design is a new elective that Stephanie is pioneering using a new class set of iPad Pros and Apple Pencils provided by the School. These works are only the start of an exciting creative venture this academic year.