Learn to Draw and Paint with Confidence

My path as an artist started early, but what stayed with me was not just the act of making images. It was the habit of looking closely.

I grew up in Southern California and began taking art classes with a local artist when I was eleven. By thirteen, I was studying during the summer at the Pasadena Art Museum, reading art history books, and discovering that art could be a way to understand the world.

That curiosity carried me through years of travel and study in the United States and Europe, including several years in Paris, where I studied at the Sorbonne and spent countless days walking through the Louvre. Seeing art in person—how paintings were built, revised, simplified, and pushed—shaped the way I teach.

For more than forty years I have worked as an artist, designer, illustrator, art director, and creative director. My teaching is process-driven: students learn how to observe, organize, revise, and develop an image from first marks to finished work.

For teen artists, especially those beginning to think about portfolios or art school, the work starts with confidence. The goal is not to make everyone draw the same way. The goal is to help each student find the art already beginning inside them—and give it stronger tools.