Saanich Peninsula artist Harry Fowler has been creating art since he could pick up a pencil or paint and now he shares his passion with his students at McTavish Academy of Art.
“My mom still has a picture of a dragon that I drew which is just lines from when I was one and a half years old, but it looks like a dragon,” said Fowler, adding that she instinctively knew he had a talent for art.
Fowler has been teaching comic book workshops for those ages eight and up.
The workshops, he said, involve coming up with a concept, design and then storyboarding to layout and later come out with a full, flushed-out comic book at the end.
“I’ve always loved superheroes and telling stories and drawing and all that kind of stuff but I never really knew how to flush it out,” he said.
He said all of his students enrolled in the comic book making class will get to feature their work in the Vancouver Island Comic Con in June. They will be featured at the Sidney Museum for the public to look through, during the Museum’s comic book exhibit that month.
People are still able to sign up for Fowler’s class, which takes place every Saturday for three hours in the month of May.
Included is their very own T-shirt, emblazoned with a character they designed.
Fowler began teaching various workshops at McTavish in December and hopes to get into teaching full time, as he already has another five or six courses in his head that he’s been writing up and establishing for the next year.
What inspired Fowler a lot in his past was superheroes and he said a lot of the drawing he did was illustration and graphic design.
When he attended college, he got more into the foundations and the basics of how to do hyper-realism, composition and colour theory.
Now, Fowler is inspired most by other artist’s work and his students, especially the younger ones, he said, as they aren’t as jaded.
“They’re more open, and sometimes the ideas and concepts that they come up with are so amazing and so integrated and out there …” he said.
He said in his very first parent and tot class, there were six kids, who, instead of sitting down and drawing, they took chalk, and on the main chalkboard drew lines back and forth, which Fowler said looked really stormy, inspiring one of his paintings.
“If you’re not feeling inspired but your surrounded by inspired people, it will spark inspiration.”
Besides the comic book workshops and parent and tot classes, Fowler also teaches drawing foundations and painting in acrylic foundation classes.
For more information or to sign up for one of the classes visit mctavishacademy.ca or call 778-351-0088.
— PNR