The stories that we grow up on surely shape our development into consumers and even creators of media. On October 24, 2024, Glenbard South students Breanne Crawford and Amelia Buhle were asked to breathe new life into these tales during a virtual illustration challenge run by ArtConnectEd.
ArtConnectEd, formerly known as the Illinois High School Art Exhibition, is an organization of art educators dedicated to uplifting artistic excellence through instruction and funding. Each year, Ms. Heise, South’s AP Drawing teacher, chooses two students—one underclassman and one senior—to represent the school in ArtConnectEd’s Virtual Illustration Art Throwdown. The organization’s Art Throwdown offers four different categories—Virtual Illustration, Digital Photography, 3D Cardboard Sculpture and In-Person Illustration. These competitions attract high school students from all across the state to show off their skills as they perfect a piece that adheres to a common prompt. From there, submissions are judged based on feedback from social media.
Although this was Crawford’s first year competing under ArtConnectEd, South as a whole is no stranger to its landscape. Last winter saw Buhle competing alongside her peers, Alishbaa Karim and Israel Hernandez, in the association’s 3D Cardboard Sculpture contest. A separate sculpture of hers even landed in one of their galleries. Last year, South’s very own Mikey Alam and Zoe Price competed in the same digital illustration event. Alam won 2nd place for his dynamic design of an animalistic album cover.
This fall’s Virtual Illustration prompt required artists to create a book cover for a novel named “Shadows,” a hypothetical modernization of a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm. Submissions included twists on the stories of “Snow White,” “The Six Swans” and “The Fox and the Horse.”
Our own competitors, too, chose to subvert the stories we all know with a touch of their individual artistic flair. While Buhle brought humor to the page with a pizza-delivering Little Red whose greatest enemy was reimagined as a menacing chihuahua, Crawford utilized the imposing figures of trees, dogs and eyes to create suspense.
Time limits are infamous enemies of any artistic block, and Crawford and Buhle both found that the 90 minutes on the clock served as a unique yet enriching opportunity to measure their capabilities under an unusually strict deadline. “I didn’t have a lot of practice with drawing that quick,” Crawford admitted. As AP Drawing students, the two often work under the expectation that their pieces will be completed in a timely fashion leading up to the day in May when their portfolios are due to The College Board. Nevertheless, they are seldom subjected to boundaries as unforgiving as those of the Throwdown. Buhle seconded, “If we have two weeks to make a piece, I spend a week not actually on the final paper. I spend a week in my sketchbook, just journaling and doing process work.” Continuing on despite this unfamiliar structure, the pair jumped right into creation, majorly leaving their instincts to thoroughly brainstorm behind in the rush to present a finished product.
Yet another avenue for growth presented itself in the fact that neither Buhle nor Crawford considered themselves experts in digital illustration. Although the Virtual Illustration Throwdown category accepts both digital and physical artwork, many competitors find digital art to be more conducive to the hour and a half they are given to work with. Buhle and Crawford shared in this sentiment, both stepping into this mode of work as a necessity. Once they laid their iPads down, however, the two discovered a new appreciation for a style that they had previously denoted a second choice. “I was really proud of myself because it’s scary turning in a piece using a medium that you don’t really use,” Crawford said. As their adrenaline rushes subsided, the two noted a newfound willingness to test their limits with digital creation.
To any who hope to participate in ArtConnectEd’s Throwdowns in the future, Buhle advised, “It’s okay to…just sit with the prompt for a while.” She attests that competing artists must fight against the urge to drastically derail their usual creative flow in the face of the challenge’s time constraints. “Just remember that you know your own process better than anyone else,” she said.
Indeed, this duo of newly discovered digital artists found joy in staying true to each of their unique artistic styles. As the year progresses and these two continue to develop their portfolios, community members and South students alike can expect them to make their mark in their very own shades of genius.
