Students in Dennis Scheele’s 2-D art class only work original. Meaning that nothing is taken or traced from the internet and nothing comes from anywhere other than the students own mind. Junior Emily Giffin knows this well.

    Giffin has been interested in art since the sixth grade, but wasn’t always satisfied with her work.

    “It’s good to be critical,” Giffin said. “When you look at your artwork, you have to be critical, and you have to want to move forward, and you have to ask other people what they think and get actual opinions.”

    Giffin dabbled in animation, but quickly discovered that 2-D art is more her speed.

    “I did try animation but people made fun of me for trying it,” Giffin said. “Now they have to see pictures of me in the newspaper for my art.”

    Giffin does both physical and digital art. She works on backgrounds and opening screens for online video games as well as a variety of different kinds of physical art.

    “I can do anything from a cartoon or something that’s semi-realistic, to something that’s completely realistic that maybe looks like it’s a picture,” Giffin said. “It depends partly on my mood.”

    Giffin says that Scheele has been the biggest supporter of her art.

    “I’ve had a lot of art teachers and I’ve found Mr. Scheele is the only art teacher [who] let me do my own thing,” Giffin said.

    Scheele noticed relatively quickly that Giffin’s style was different from those of her classmates.

    “Emily is very meticulous. [She] pays attention to detail. [She’s] very creative,” Scheele said. “Emily was so unique in the sense that her vision, her interest was very unique. She did skulls, people with skin missing or melted faces. Eerie kind of stuff.”

    Giffin also took an adult art course outside of school. She says that her favorite part of that course was that she was seen as an artist and not just a kid in an art class. She also enjoyed being surrounded by people with a genuine passion for art.

    Giffin says her biggest inspiration to improve comes from the desire to prove herself.

    “My biggest inspiration for art isn’t a person I could pinpoint,” Giffin said. “I like Monet and I like Picasso, but my inspiration is driven more or less to prove myself. People picked on me for making crappy artwork. I’m a very stubborn person, so I didn’t give up. I kept going until I got really good.”

    Giffin says that determination is what makes an artist.

    “There’s no person in this world who is born an artist,” Giffin said. “As long as you have the determination to become an artist, you will become one.”

    Giffin says that the largest benefit of creating art is being able to articulate feelings without using words.

    “I feel like art’s important because there are emotions that are hard to describe to another person sometimes,” Giffin said. “Some emotions don’t really have a word [for] them, and when you take a piece and you’re feeling a certain emotion and you put yourself into that piece through color, lines, subject matter, and symbolism, then someone else can look at that piece and completely understand your emotion.”

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