We are a safe place for first-time artists, or anyone who has never had training before. More than that, at Firstlight, beginning artists discover and practice the critical things that make art work – the Foundations. The lessons are clear and simple. Our Foundations course, for your first 2 years, includes 72 individual lessons covering everything an artist needs to feel competent. Techniques are presented with detailed demonstrations and well-designed projects. Artists will use these foundational insights every day as their skills grow.

After our Foundations course, artists move from practicing and learning, into creating a greater number of finished works. Because it’s important for Foundations to be reviewed, the Creations students stay in the same classroom so they hear the lessons again, and can even help other students. It’s been discovered recently that teaching helps you learn even better than repetition. The 72 Creations lessons are more challenging versions of the Foundations course, with more room for self-expression too. It’s like an athlete lifting more weight.

Artists who want to move towards a higher level are encouraged to continue moving up to Expressions. Students work with their instructor to create a vision and work on their portfolio. The instructor coaches you through your projects. Young artists who are working towards art schools get help with admissions letters and portfolio requirements. Many of our advanced artists have been in the program for 8 years or more, but the ultimate goal is to move away from needing lessons and into your own studio.

And pretty easy to get to.

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“I started Firstlight in 2006, because we needed a community art school that focused on each student’s goals.”

Dennas Davis

Having Fun

The other day, a whole group of some of our most rambunctious 3rd and 4th grade students said, “We’re having fun painting these gift boxes!” And amazingly, they were all diligently working on the project. What they didn’t realize, is that they were learning how to draw a cube in 3-point perspective, and the color mixing “game” lead them to use complimentary color mixing to soften and dull their shadow colors. Yay!

Self Expression

The number one complaint we hear from kids is, “at my other school art class they never let us do what we want to do.”

Artists have a deep desire to choose their subject, and invent new things – because that is the essence of creativity! All too often, traditional classes forget to add choices along the way. We have coined a term, “Artists’ Choice”, that we use so they acknowledge that they’re getting choices. Sometimes the whole lesson is a full-on Artists’ Choice day, and everyone always cheers!

Encouragement

Being encouraged is helpful, but only if you trust your encourager to tell you the truth, and in a kindly way. Being critiqued, however, is only encouraging if you want help and have specifically asked for it.

Our teachers are trained to ask for permission and to gently offer suggestions. We don’t use the terms “right” or “wrong”, but refer to art as “accurate” or “inaccurate”. We also do not use the word, “mistake” since that implies that you shouldn’t have tried. We call art we don’t like, a “LEARNER” and art that we do like, a “KEEPER”.

Music

Playing music while learning and practicing creates stronger pathways in the brain – and it’s fun! We have lots of playlists we’ve created that are kid friendly.

Small Classes

All of our studios are small, and our classes never go over 10 students for KidsART (with two instructors), 12 students for Foundations (10 for adults), and 16 students for Cartooning. We can provide a lot of individual attention this way.

Materials

Handling graphite, paints, brushes, specific papers, canvas, ink, pastels and more, is a lot more fun if you know what they do and can control them. Ink, for instance, is difficult to control and can be very messy. We tell our students that ink is like electricity; if you have safeguards in place and can make it do what you want, it’s fantastic. That’s why we stick the bottles down on a plate so they don’t turn over, and why we give everyone a ziplock bag to place the bottles in. No more spills.

Technique

Most technique is about movement and holding tools in a certain way. We start early with “color dancing” for the youngest students, and we encourage the use of music throughout the full range of ages.

One of our most revolutionary methods, is in our watercolor lessons. We have developed a simple phrase that changes everything for the student, eliminating the need for lengthy explanations about the nature of the paints and paradigm shifts for how you manage it. Everyone enjoys watercolor because they understand how it works right away.

Practice

Practice is almost a bad word to some artists. They believe they were born with their talent and only had to walk up to the canvas and begin. Of course, they won’t show you their work from a few years back!

We ask our students, “where are the DaVinci and Rembrandt paintings from when they were your age?” It’s obvious that they threw away all of their training work from before they were masters (we call practice work, Learners). Likewise, artists must understand the importance of doing some things over and over, just like musicians do. Our lessons bring repetition of certain techniques and methods but in a creative way, so that students don’t feel like they’re just reviewing something they’ve already done. 

Discovery

It’s pretty well known that discovery teaching helps students retain their lessons. Often we’ll have them start a task they’re not ready for. This creates an urgent need, which we can then fill right away. This is how we create the perfect timing for teaching specific methods and techniques.

Schemas

Working out simple ways to convey a complex subject is near and dear to our hearts. You can imagine us in a laboratory, working day and night to improve communication and understanding with simple analogies and schemas. After decades of this, we’re getting pretty good at it.

Mnemonic Devices

One of our best examples of this is the “Three Steps to Accuracy”. We also have, 7 steps to painting; color journals, graphic posters, and more.

Concrete Concepts

Don’t get us started on all the abstract terminology that the adult art world uses that kids can’t easily understand. “Negative Space”, for instance, is awful. We changed that to, “Air Shapes”.

Careful References

Often a subject in a photo seems like it should work, but is too hard for a student to do. This damages their confidence. Our reference photos are chosen with the specific project in mind, and are known to lead to more success stories, based on our own experimentation with these lessons.

Printed Guides

Printouts are provided for almost every lesson. Students sometimes share a reference or guide with others, and often get a special handout they can keep. We have worksheets, learning games, and Color Journals which are very popular! All have been designed by our founder, Dennas.

Learning Styles

Sometimes we have game sheets, and sometimes we have demonstrations. Every now and then students get to write a few things down. The key is to approach insights in different ways.

Toons is for beginners, and also for students who have been working on their cartoons, stories and even their style, for some time. The class of first-year cartoonists covers the basics. Students learn how to develop characters, create strong images, backgrounds, draw from reference material, and create good speak-bubbles. Modeling clay is used for character development with 3D visualization. Several fun projects, like a movie poster or TV show title-screen, help students apply their skills. At the end of the year, they will create a short comic book. Please call for availability, since this class fills to capacity earlier than most.

Toons 2 is for older first-year students and advancing 2nd year students. The projects and instructions are similar to Toons 1.

Advanced Toons continues the same theme of developing characters and working towards a personal style. The projects are more challenging, and we do some projects as a team, just like professional cartoonists do. We’ll work on heads, hands, arms & legs, as well as body stance and action poses. The regular Toons class must be taken previously, or a portfolio can be submitted to bypass that course if the artist has already develped their work and is in high school. It is also good to have taken Foundations for two years, but is not required.

Dennas Davis

Owner & Director

Illustrator, painter, teacher, and director of Firstlight, Dennas has been a professional artist for 40 years. He has millions of books in print worldwide in over 30 languages, and is also the Founder of The Art Instructor, an online curriculum site for art educators.