Hello! My name is Bear and I run Young Illustrators Studio!

My classes are easy-going, mics-on spaces where we discuss and practice the process of art making, from fundamentals like line, shape, value and color, to connecting over what we love, what we struggle with, how to persevere through doubt and disappointment in our art making and ultimately learn how to trust the process and develop trust in our intuition. 

I have a fun, energetic, patient, encouraging personality. I believe learning can always be fun and exciting! 

I teach targeted art skills and fundamentals while building a safe social-emotional space where students can explore how to think like an artist, see like an artist and begin to be in the world as an artist!

All my digital illustration courses are guided step-by-step. My comics and animation classes are more club-style where we work on projects independently while hanging out and being social.

I am a self-taught award-winning, exhibiting, working artist. I have a degree in journalism from Temple University and I worked for years in journalism, editing, graphic design and marketing before quitting it all to become a working artist.

As an artist and writer, I have taught elementary, middle school and high school art and creative writing in classes including: drawing, painting, comics, stop motion, character design, and fundamental art principles like line, perspective, color, composition and more. I am a member of the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators and the Art Brand Alliance. You can usually find me writing or working on a picture book dummy, creating sculptures, painting or reading!

Through guided drawing and painting, group brainstorms, games and by analyzing the books and movies we love, I will guide learners to explore and discuss a variety of storytelling principles like character development and narrative arcs, as well as art principles like gesture drawing, composition, color theory, light theory, visual storytelling and more. 

If your kid is into beautiful chaos (aka being able to express themselves, find their voices, find value in collaboration and mutual support), where kids get to keep their mics ON (aka learn how to listen to others and value other opinions and perspectives), and don’t mind unpredictable outcomes (aka learn that being creative is a process not an end result when you’re learning), then maybe they’ll like my Outschool classes. 

All my classes are actively anti-racist, LGBTQIA2S-celebrating, intersectionally safe spaces.

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Procreate Illustration Skill Level Breakdowns for reference when looking through our catalog of classes is currently undergoing an update, and you will find new language here soon, containing all the same info, with less intimidating "level" designations!:

First things first: These classes is FUN and friendly and chill, despite how technical and intense the following descriptions are. In fact if you are the adult to a kid who is new or somewhat new to all this, don’t even tell them all of the following please! I don’t want them to get into their heads about all this until they WANT to know, which will happen in time. Until then they will be learning these things while thinking they are just hanging out having fun with friends :)

Become an Illustrator classes are different because we don’t just learn Procreate tools and tricks to follow trends—we also learn tons of art theory, build intuition and style and learn how to have a growth mindset along the way! We use a digital medium to practice a full art fundamentals curriculum in the most fun way possible—by having a theme requested by students each week through which to learn and practice the following! 

I teach two types of Illustration classes, both of which are recurring weekly-pay classes, that learners can join anytime:

1. The original recurring Become An Illustrator classes: These are based on age with a wide variety of levels (great for most students in their first few years in my classes!). Classes are ages 8-13 (level1 & level 2) and ages 13-18 (all levels). These classes work step-by-step with me so everyone can follow along, while many more advanced students modify and add nuance and detail as they work faster, and still benefit from new prompts, tools and techniques from me. This is a great way to have a friendly art club each week while building level 1-3 skills and keeping up a practice for level 4-5 skills! 

A note about levels 4-5 in this category: Frequently, young artists may be at a level 4-5 in some areas because their interests and dedication have led to a lot of practice in certain themes and techniques. These students frequently are still developing level 1-3 skills in many other areas and benefit from my classes because we work on a variety of themes and techniques from week to week.

2. Cohorts (NEW!) are also based on age, but have a narrower skill level within each cohort because the class is designed to have kids stay together, aging up in their group as they progress. The techniques and art theory we are learning is based on where the cohort is and the focus is on progress. Learners can stay together until they age out of Outschool (19th birthday) or move onto college/next steps in their lives. New students are very welcome to join if they match the level of the cohort! Please message me if you have questions or are unsure. I am very happy to have learners join a cohort if this type of committed community fits for them even if they feel a bit shaky on some of the items listed in the level for that cohort—we can make it work and get you up to speed!

Read the descriptions for each class to understand what class to join!

Here is how you can know what level you are (and what you will be practicing to get you to the next level, which is where you are headed if you join us). PLEASE NOTE how many variables exist within each of these levels—this is NOT an exact science and my priority is to get you into the class you want to be in. So let’s have a chat and make a plan for you!

Level 1: Beginner: You feel new or somewhat-new to more than three of the following: 

Procreate Experience: layers, layer and brush opacity, hue/saturation/brightness sliders, selection tool, transform tool, brush/smudge/eraser tools, color-select (eyedropper)

Art Experience: drawing from references, drawing forms and figures from basic shapes, visually being able to see forms and figures as basic shapes, color theory, value organization, composition, foreshortening, perspective, making steady lines confidently, mark-making, modifying on your own confidently. If you don’t know what a lot of these things are yet, you should start here!


Level 2: Advanced Beginner: You understand and are developing skills in most of the following while still getting prompts and demos from the teacher. You can move at least a lightly moderate pace (you might be faster). You may not feeling super amazing at all of these yet, but you understand most of what you are being asked to do when given demos and you are practicing them! Some of these things might be starting to feel easier! 

Procreate Experience: layers, layer and brush opacity, hue/saturation/brightness sliders, selection tool, transform tool, brush/smudge/eraser tools, color-select (eyedropper), adjustments, clipping masks

Art Experience in some of the following areas: drawing from references, drawing forms and figures from basic shapes, visually being able to see forms and figures as basic shapes, color theory, value, composition, foreshortening, perspective, making steady lines confidently, mark-making. You can make art on your own in your free time using most of these things! You are sometimes modifying your art from what I am teaching but it may feel a bit awkward still. You may need to see some demos more than once from class-to-class while your visual and hand-arm-eyes-coordination toolbox is being built!

If you have zero Procreate experience and you are under age 11, please join a level 1 class. I will let you know when you’re ready to move to level 2! 


Level 3: Intermediate: There are two ways you might fit into an Intermediate class.

1. You are new to Procreate but have intermediate drawing skills, and now you want to try Procreate—YAY welcome! This is you if you can follow moderately paced demos and prompts to learn Procreate along with us (usually ages 10+ simply because of the way the brain develops its ability to follow multistep instruction paired with the nature of the medium we are using).

2. You understand and can use the following Procreate tools with quick prompts from the teacher: Procreate layers, layer and brush opacity, hue/saturation/brightness sliders, selection tool, transform tool, brush/smudge/eraser tools, color-select (eyedropper), adjustments, clipping masks, reference tools, 

BOTH of these paths make you intermediate if you feel comfortable drawing from references, drawing forms and figures from basic shapes, beginning to visually see more complicated forms and figures as basic shapes!

You may also have some of the following, but not necessarily, and we will be learning and practicing more of these: color theory, value organization, composition, foreshortening, perspective, making steady lines confidently, mark-making, style development


Level 4: Intermediate-Advanced: You feel solid in all the things described in levels 1-3 and want more.

You have a solid foundation in the process of improving your drawing, color and composition skills. This doesn’t mean you necessarily feel good about all the art you make (that’s impossible anyway). You are modifying your art with ease. You may not have put it in these words before, but you are familiar with the process of growth mindset: trying—>failing—>assessing—>getting curious—>trying again. 

You are making your own characters, environments and feel good about your mimicking skills—you can create what you see. At this level you are working on having a solid art practice where you want to be challenged with fresh references and prompts to modify and create your own vision. You are working on honing your style and what that means to you.

Level 4 artists are sometimes motivated by exciting challenges to try new things, will learn more about the application of their work in the world of illustration and art including art markets and responsibilities of artists.