In drawing, I'd work primarily in pencils or conte crayon. Otherwise the medium of choice could be digital (Photoshop or any similar digital medium).
I've been drawing since I was 4, and have graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Bachelor's in Fine Arts. I've also worked for Disney Research for a year and a half, and now freelance as an artist for clients.
About Emily S.
I've been working professionally as an artist since 2009, making graphics and illustrations for clients and having worked for Disney Research for just over a year. I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Bachelor's in Fine Arts in 2012. I'm currently a freelance artist, but I also love contributing to the art education community by inspiring and instructing anyone who wants to learn.
I specialize in drawing/illustration, digital painting, and 2D hand-drawn frame-by-frame digital animation, mostly in the context of video games (with 2D graphics). Many of my drawing/animation students have been interested in drawing/animating animals, especially furry/anthro memes. I've helped students complete tiny looping animations, creating memes as well as short films. Each student can work on whatever they're interested during my classes, whether they want to draw their favorite cartoon character from reference or animate their own original character to their favorite animation meme.
My hope and mission is to successfully distribute my knowledge, skills and experience to anyone who wants to acquire them.
I'm capable of a large range of improvements, from goals as hobbyists to more professional goals. I have successfully helped students get admitted into their desired art schools through portfolio preparation, as well as helped artists get their first gigs as freelancers. I can serve as a mentor for an artist's early years as a contractor.
Lessons are taught through video calls where I always share my screen to clearly show my demonstrations in real time. Students may also share their screens if they are working digitally. If students work on paper, they may take phone pics and message/email them to me during class, or hold up their work on the webcam if it's high enough quality.
Thank you for your interest!
Reviews
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Very grateful. Very understanding

Still very excellent.

Emily continues to be a great tutor for my daughter. She has incredible patience - especially since my daughter loves to chat - and has helped foster a strong passion for digital drawing in my daughter. Emily's skill with the tools makes it easy for my daughter to learn and experiment more on her own as well.

Help me understand my flaws in drawing, and show me many pointers on how to improve like body proportions, outlines and how to use software like Krita. Overall was a very good learning experience!!

My daughter very much enjoyed the class and working with Emily. She learned a lot and is very excited for her next lesson.

Good online/remote cartooning lessons for a 12 year old. Working with his interests, while laying the foundations of technique all the same.

Emily is a gifted artist and teacher. She is very patient, encouraging, and informative. I have learned a lot from her and she is helping me with my perfectionism. I couldn't have asked for a better teacher for me! Thank you,
Emily.

Great lesson, super professional and taught me a lot.

emily is an excellent teacher and very efficient and productive in the lessons. :)

My son really enjoys the lessons from Emily!

Emily is a patient, compassionate and gifted teacher and this is only my first class with her. I am looking forward to working with her and hope to improve my drawing skills.

This was my first introduction to animation. Emily was great! She was patient, and very knowledgeable. She taught me how to use my software and showed me different techniques I could do. Planning on taking a couple more classes

I'm still really grateful for Emily. Very supportive, and my motivation has kept up because of her. I thank you for keeping my hope up.

Very happy with my daughters improvements. Really appreciated Emily’s knowledge of anime and drawing tablets.

Emily was great! Very patient and knowlegable.

Emily has been amazing with my daughter. She is patient and encouraging and has taught her so much in only a few lessons. I've seen my daughter's figure drawing skills grow so much over the past few weeks. I'm even seeing her break out of her comfort zone on her own more often than before she started working with Emily. I was a little wary of online lessons, but they have worked out great and I think actually taken a little pressure off that she might feel doing an in person lesson.

My ten-year-old son, Andrew, has had five lessons with Emily, and they have all been spectacular. She has a great rapport with kids, and helped him improve his drawing skills tremendously. Andrew has always looked forward to his lessons. I highly recommend Emily!

First lesson went very well for my teenage daughter. She wants to sign up for more. Thank you!

Emily So is very creative. I shared with her my vision for an animation. She created the first 8 frames of the Storyboard with camera angles. Thank you so much Emily!!

She is very kind, very patient and really knows her stuff!

Very friendly and easy to talk to, and a good teacher!

Very patient with our 11 year old...he said it was his best day ever! He is looking forward to his next lesson!

Emily was great. She was very patient and very informative. She takes time with the student and she will look up information to help you along the way.

The art genres that she can help you with are alot of things, whether you focus on humans or animals, traditional or digital. She helps you with the art tips you need, whatever problems you have she can help you with. Shes not the type of instructor who starts from scratch for everyone. She will start from the point where you are and help you improve on your own pace. Would definately recommend classes with this instructor.

Emily is a great teacher! after two classes only i love her already!

My daughter was very happy with her first drawing class with Emily and is excited to continue working with her. Thank you, Emily!

Emily is a fantastic teacher, very patient and my 11 year old daughter really enjoyed her lesson.

Very excellent with explations. Supportive. Very great with teaching.

Excellent class

Very personalized teaching. The extra time to answer questions was very appreciated

My son is 14 and he loved his first lesson with Emily. She took some extra time to answer some question about a problem that he was having with his animation program and followed up with some new solutions. He felt really inspired after the lesson and continued to work on his animations in the following days. We will be signing up for a regular time with Emily and I can't wait to see how his skills progress.

Excellent!

Great class, learned a lot!

My daughter really enjoys working with Emily!

Emily is an amazing art teacher, no doubt about it. I started lessons with art work that was painfully disproportional and ended with work I would never even dream of being capable of creating. She’s a supportive but tough teacher, and helps you learn what interests you. She helped me get into LaGuardia, the high school of my dreams, which I couldn’t have done without her. I would never choose a different art teacher, because I truly believe she is the best. The improvement I saw from when I first started lessons with her is insane, and I’m so glad I got the chance to have her had my teacher. Hands down, the best art teacher ever.

Emily is THE BEST! She exceeded all expectations & was a tremendous help getting our 12 yr old daughter started!
She related so well it was like taking lessons from a good friend! Our daughter now has a solid working foundation to expand on!
Thanks to Emily we got the right hardware & software without breaking the bank!
She’s a total Pro & while there might be other instructors as good there are certainly none better!
Our experience was so good with Emily we will explore other TAKELESSON Classes in the future! Thank You VERY MUCH Emily!!

Emily is a very patient and encouraging teacher. The ability to see real-time feedback on my drawing was extremely helpful. I highly recommend taking lessons from Emily!

I cannot say enough good about Emily! SHE IS THE BEST! She's a total professional & her personal attention & rapport were exactly what we needed for our12 yr old! I would give her 10 stars if we could! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!! Doug & Cierra

We have been using Emily for my daughter to get ready to submit her portfolio for college and Emily has been heaven sent!!! She is patent, helpful and supportive of my daughters ambitions. Can't thank her enough!!

My daughter learned a lot in her first lesson with Emily. The whole video/online lesson thing was new to me, but I thought it went smoothly.

Emily was very clear and very good, taking me through the first few steps.

Great lesson with our daughter.

My first lesson was eye opening. I have been afraid of using colors in my art and she explained things to me in a way that I could digest. After the lesson I worked on a rock study in color and was really happy with how it came out. I sent it to her to review and she gave me some great feedback on how to add some more color to it.. Thanks Emily.

My 10 year old daughter just had her first animation lesson with Emily. What a great experience! My daughter is so excited about everything she learned. She can't wait for her next lesson. Emily is warm, funny, and great with kids!

The lesson was really helpful and fun.

Had a blast learning from Emily! Her professional experience and great coaching skills were a perfect fit. Emily's Ps lesson really accelerated my learning curve and helped organize my project workflow.
5/5 stars ~ highly recommended!

I loved my first lesson and can't wait until my next one!

Emily has been awesome! She is very talented and great with my daughter. Izzy has learned a lot!

Emily is great ay teaching photoshop. Thanks Emily

Emilio loved Emily's lessons. Thank you Emily, you are the best.

I enjoyed my first lesson. Emily is very nice.

amazing teacher she works with you and helps you get better with your drawing

Emily was extremely helpful. She taught my daughter who didn't know anything about animation and coached her all the way until she was able to produce a short animated movie. She is always very professional and caring of the student needs.
Thank you Emily for all your help.

Emily is extremely patient, knowledgeable, and well rounded. Students of any age will benefit from her expertise.

Emily is fantastic. She is patient and really good at instructing and critiquing work. She seems very experienced and really tries to give both positive feedback and the appropriate constructive criticism. She is also great at encouraging students to not get frustrated by "mistakes" but to accept that mistakes are a part of the growing and becoming a better artist. Having Emily in my ear and working on sketching with me has greatly improved the way I am seeing my work and I'm very much looking forward to working with her more to improve my skills. I would highly recommend her.

My 13-year-old son had his first lesson and when he finished he came bounding down the stairs to show me what they made. He told me Emily was cool, funny, and really easy to talk to. He was comfortable right away and they dove right into his interest.

Attentive, engaged and informative. Emily takes time to check in to meet skill level and tailor sessions to your needs.

Emily prepared my 2 kids for Art School Auditions. She researched the school's requirements and prepared my kids accordingly. My daughter who auditioned a month ago was accepted to the art school thanks to Emily for her gifts, patience, and attention to detail. My son will have his audition this weekend. He feels fully prepared. Emily is awesome and we are grateful to have her as a teacher!

I'm a 20 year old college student and I've been taking Animation, Illustration, and Painting lessons with Emily for almost two years now. I started out very new to drawing and painting, especially digitally, and Emily has brought me so far in the past couple years. She has taught me about animation, color theory, drawing, illustration, and even professionalism as a contracted artist herself. I've progressed so much, and she has been there with me every step of the way! Emily is so patient and encouraging, and pushes you to really do your best and work at what you're learning. That being said, she has never been one to pressure me or push me too far, or be too harsh. These lessons are meant to be fun, and she keeps it that way! My weekly lessons are the highlight of my week, and I truly can't rate her highly enough. I would recommend her for young kids just as much as older kids (like me!) and even hopeful professionals.

Emily was patient and made accommodations for my 6 year old who is showing some interest in drawing.

Emily is great- she really took the time with my daughter to explain how to use the program.

Emily as so patient with our daughter. In one short hour, our daughter picked up so many new tricks and was comfortably playing around in the software!

thank you for teaching me animation. it is so fun.

Emily is a great teacher, patient and very knowledgable. I was so frustrated trying to figure out the simplest things in PhotoShop and thanks to her instruction and patience, my photoshop skills have improved dramaticall.
I'll be back for more lessons!

Emily was knowledable about subjet matter, willing to adjust focus when called for and very patient.
I like her very much.

Emily is an excellent instructor. I learned several new drawing techniques in my first class. She provided time for questions, taught some cool tricks, is very encouraging and knowledgeable. I'm buying more classes with Emily!!

Emily is an excellent instructor. I learned several new drawing techniques in my first class. She provided time for questions, taught some cool tricks, is very encouraging and knowledgeable. I'm buying more classes with Emily!!

During only one class with Emily, I was able to learn several techniques that will aide me with my drawing.

A good experience, knowledgable and very helpful, I would recommend Emily to anyone looking to improve on their artwork.

We love Emily's calm demeanor. She is encouraging, patient, and has great insight into Michael's abilities and learning style.

Emily is excellent teacher and my kids are really loved her lessons. She explains clearly to kids and encourage kids to express their opinion. I saw great improvement in my kids drawing. Initially I was skeptical how online drawing lessons could be effective. I would like to thank you Emily for making drawing lessons effective and fun.

Emily is a great teacher, and also she is a very talented artist. Her classes are working really well for me at my skill level. She is very patient and dedicated, she really goes at of the way trying to answer all questions I have, even if she has no immediate answer for me, she takes note of it and she answers during next session.
Learning Photoshop with Emily is been great and also fun!, looking forward to my next classes.
Photos & Videos
17 Photos & VideosExperience
Freelance Artist
Sep 2012 - Present-
- create game graphics for clients (character animations, background imagery, objects, user interface designs) - illustration - digital painting - 2D animations - drawings - advise in game designs - advise in game marketing
Artist Intern
May 2011 - Aug 2012Disney Research Pittsburgh
- worked in Maya, rigging, animating, modeling and rendering - worked with motion capture data - created concept art - created miscellaneous 2D art/illustrations - made graphics for video games
Artist
Jun 2010 - Aug 2010V-teractive
- created 2D concept art for 3D modelers to model after - created 3D models with 3D Studio Max
Artist
Jun 2009 - Aug 2009MegaNudge
- created all graphics for a video game - 2D animated characters - background images - title logo and UI
Education
Bachelor's in Fine Arts
Aug 2008 - May 2012Carnegie Mellon University
Languages
English
Fluent / Native Proficiency
Awards
Nominated Best Student Animation at AniMazing Spot Film Festival 2012- "Dinnersaurus Rex"
Aug 2012AniMazing Spot
Dozzi Scholarship
May 2010Carnegie Mellon University
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