Live classes start March 8th!
...and we're super excited it's happening!!!
Hello and Welcome to dX exPress!!!
We’re so happy you’re here and a part of what we’re growing - a wholistic collaborative where creatives support creatives.
Live Classes Start March 8th!!!
dX Live Weekly Class Schedule
(all times in Eastern Time)
We’re thrilled to announce live classes will start on Friday, March 8th with Aleesha and Parz kicking things off with dX Live Open Mic.
Here’s a description of each class:
Please join Dr. Matt on Mondays for mindfulness, meditation, and art through Art Empowerment.
He invites you to enter a window between worlds where we create sacred time and space for ourselves, our emotions, and our feelings while using artwork to better understand ourselves, our experiences, and our worlds.
Art Empowerment isn’t therapy (art therapy, mental health therapy, or otherwise). While it has therapeutic value in making us feel better, Art Empowerment encompasses the idea that engaging in creative processes, such as visual arts, can enhance self-confidence, amplify our best within ourselves, and promote individual change, and wellbeing.
Art Empowerment is about the process, not the end product.
In this fun and engaging 90-minutes, Jedidiah Dore will be assisting you to elevate your creative art skills.
Come - Explore - Experiment - with a variety of art methods and techniques such as: urban sketching, figure drawing, life studies, portrait sketching, printmaking, along with painting techniques including watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and much more!
Join me on Thursdays to play with Procreate, Copic markers, coloured pencils and ballpoint pens. We’ll mostly be drawing faces (because that’s what I do best) – don’t be scared by that. I was terrified of drawing faces until I did a 100 day project drawing a face every day – once I’d drawn 100 faces the fear was completely gone and I had realised how much fun it was (and my skills improved enormously over those 100 days).
We’ll be drawing all kinds of faces (including animal ones) and expressions, but without any pressure to achieve likeness or create a perfect drawing. You’ll see me make many mistakes in class, but when I do I’ll show you how I resolve them, or simply ignore them. I’ll also be helping you learn to get the best out of the art materials listed above. And we’ll be learning how to do all kinds of exciting things with Procreate on an iPad (and don’t worry if you don’t have an iPad – most of what we’ll be doing can also be done on paper and I’ll give you some guidance on how to do that). Most importantly, we’ll be having fun while developing drawing skills.
Parz Sattva and Aleesha Sattva host this open creative time for us to chat, share about supplies, ask questions etc.
Come hang out!
How would a creative writer who is fascinated by story teach a class about creative writing? Ideally, he’d do it within a story. And in the end, that is what this class is and will be - an unending story of exploration and discovery within the written word with each session being a new chapter.
Parz loves words, creating characters and doing their voices. He's never done art... but he's decided that there needs to be some illustrating too because they are a fun way to add depth to any story - so please be patient with him while he teaches himself to draw with every story he illustrates.
And did we mention there’ll be prompts and exercises and discussions, but most of all there’ll be fun with a generous helping of frivolity?
Parz looks forward to inspiring and being inspired by you!
How to sign up for dX Recordings, dX Live, or both:
Something we’ve heard again and again is that people want to be able to have more choice in what they’re purchasing. To that end, we’re offering seats to live classes (dX Live) separately from the recordings of those classes (dX Recordings). And, of course, some people want both!
You get to choose how much you pay
Only you know what dX Live and/or dX Recordings will be worth to you. To that end, we offer a sliding scale. Whatever amount you feel is fair and affordable is all we ask. You'll receive the same benefits from the program(s) you buy no matter your chosen amount. (Due to technical issues, both dX Live and dX Recordings require at least a $1 subscription).
dX Live offers 24+ hours of live art and creative writing classes plus 6+ hours of open art time per month, interaction with your instructors, and community support.
dX Recordings offers 3 months of recorded classes (once we’ve been running for the first 3 months, that’ll be 48+ lessons available on demand) and community support
And, of course, no matter what you choose, you have our gratitude that you're here!
To sign up for…:
…dX Recordings - recordings of the live classes only (and not attend live) - please click this button:
…dX Live - a seat at the live classes only (and without access to the recordings) - please click this button:
…both dX Live and dX Recordings, please click this button (you’ll first purchase dX Live and then in the purchase confirmation will be given an link to purchase dX Recordings):
Instructor Bio’s:
Helen LP:
Helen Leigh-Phippard is a British portrait artist who started drawing with the online Sketchbook Skool more than 10 years ago. In 2016 she started what was supposed to be a 100 day project drawing a face a day but didn’t stop for more than 3 years, mostly using images from the Museum by Sktchy app as inspiration. She’s now drawn over 1800 portraits (with Copic markers, coloured pencils, watercolour, ballpoint pen and on an iPad using the Procreate app) and regularly draws commissions. She’s been teaching portrait drawing with a variety of media online for the past 2 years.
(Check out Helen’s Instagram)
Jedidiah Dore:
Jedidiah Dore is an Artist and Part time Faculty of Illustration at Parsons New School in NYC. He specializes in reportage art, mural painting and drawing.
Dore was commissioned to paint a large-scale NYC Murals Project at the landmark Daily News Building in Manhattan. There are 17 completed murals with 6 of the murals measuring 30 feet in length. He recently created art for an exhibition with NASA James Webb Space Telescope, documented the Artemis 1 Mission - Launch at Kennedy Space Center, and is currently exhibiting a collection of paintings at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum.
After studying painting and illustration at Pratt Institute, and inspired by his love for science and space exploration, he began an ongoing project called Stellar Science Series with many initial ideas and concepts sketched on site. The ongoing project has taken him on great adventures to places such as Mars Yard for Curiosity Rover, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Deep Space Network, Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, and opportunities to create space art for Jacob Technologies, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, and exhibit art for NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center.
Jedidiah and his work have been featured in various publications including VoyageHouston’s “Thought Provokers Series,” British GQ, and PBS, ALL Arts, Artnet, and in books such as "Pen and Ink", "Reportage drawing: Visual Journalism" (Bloomsbury, 2018), "STELLAR",and "NYC5 Over,Under,Through".
(Check out Jed’s website)
Dr. Matt Schwartz:
Dr. Matthew L. Schwartz, DSW, LCSW, MBA, CFSW, is a Solution Focused Brief Therapist, a Certified Art Empowerment Facilitator, and an Implementation Scientist in Buffalo, NY.
Matt has been an artist since Middle School when he learned how to paint. He completed an art track in High School, focusing on photography, illustration, and design. After graduation he spent two years as Fine Arts student before becoming an "art school dropout" Having realized that he needed to un-school from art school, and re-find his artistic hand and voice on his own.
After completing his undergraduate education, Matt served in the military as a non-commissioned officer, and later he worked as an integrated (mental health and substance abuse) clinician in agency practice in Buffalo before transitioning to full-time private practice, consulting, and training.
Matt found his path back to art when he ran art empowerment groups as the first male domestic violence counselor in Erie County, New York and saw the transformative power that art could have to empower and to heal those who have survived trauma. He is presently working with a team of interdisciplinary professionals to create new systems for the dissemination of academic research through art, zines, comics, cartoons, graffiti, projection and public spectacle.
He enjoys architectural sketching, urban sketching, and cartooning.
(Check out Dr. Matt’s website)
Parz Sattva:
Parzival Sattva discovered a love of the written word, and especially 100-word stories, in late 2018 when in an effort to find his creativity, he began writing microfiction daily. To date he’s written over 1,000 pieces. He’s been published in Fairfield Scribes and Timeless Spirit magazine.
Within those stories are a variety of characters: the Household Item Wrangler, Psychic Goddess Cassidy, Frank Cappuccino (Bicycle Patrol 51), Clyde the Forgotten Reindeer, and many more.
He also has a couple of novels in process along with reference books he intends to publish through dX.
(Check out Parz’s blog)
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Thank you for joining us on this journey. We look forward to co-creating this space with you!
The drawingXpressions “we”: Aleesha, Carissa, Dr. Matt, and Parz