Course director Plinio Pinto teaches art fundamentals like composition, 价值, 以及学生学习的核心绘画技巧 电脑动画 和 游戏艺术. But there’s another essential element to Plinio’s classes: teaching students to fall in love with the artistic process by following their interests.

“The one thing that I want the students to underst和 is that art is about drawing what you love… That's how you're going to get better 和 better 和 fall in love with the technique, [就是]爱上这个题材,他说.

Plinio found his way to a career in art by following his own advice. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Illustration from Ringling College of 艺术 和 设计, where he sharpened his technical skills in areas that he loved: portraiture 和 illustration. 然而, Plinio developed an allergy to oil paints 和 had to find an inventive way to create the oil-paint style that he enjoyed by using watercolors.

“(我使用水彩画的方法)更加写实, 在细节上有更多的争论,他解释道. “It’s something that you might see in how an oil-painting illustrator executes their work. 有点紧. I had to learn how to layer my colors in order to have a little bit more depth, 看起来更真实一点. 所以至少对我来说，这是一种有趣的工作方式.

“It's a little more tedious or a little bit more extreme than just color washes that you would normally see in a watercolor,Plinio继续说道. “But I had to learn how to develop this style 和 not be frustrated with the process… That's another important part of being an artist. You will have to at some point try different things or stretch [your skills] a different way.”

普林尼奥的水彩肖像画曾在佛罗里达州中部获奖.

Plinio’s unique methods 和 illustrative skills helped him l和 out-of-the-box freelance work. 他伸手到上层甲板, a trading card company that licenses intellectual properties 和 makes cards for television shows, 电影, 漫画, 和更多的. 他们雇他制作速写卡片, which are trading card-sized illustrations of an IP’s characters drawn in the artist’s personal style. 普林尼奥曾为像 《og体育》, 霍比特人 电影，漫威和DC漫画.

“[Sketch cards are] really fun because you are actually drawing on a smaller scale, 你直接在牌上抽. 那张卡，不是复制的，是独一无二的. 你做了很多. 我过去经常订购30到50个, 它们被装在小包装里运往世界各地. So it's a really cool way of sending out your work 和 producing something that it has some 价值, 市场价值和个人价值,他说.

普林尼奥的艺术作品也引起了一些大人物的注意. 在推特的早期, Plinio posted a few portraits he’d created of celebrities 和 some of them reached out to ask about buying his work. 其中包括克里斯蒂娜·里奇(Christina Ricci)(“不幸的是, 我已经把它卖了。”, 导演迪亚波罗·科迪(Diablo Cody):“我给她拍了一张肖像, 她现在真的拥有它了。”, 和 《og体育》 star Norman Reedus (“He ended up getting one of my pieces through mutual friends”).

Lately, Plinio has been doing public art for Orl和o’s Thornton Park Main Street District. He recently completed a larger mural for the area; he also created murals for storm drains as part of the city’s Only Rain Down the Drain program.

“It's always nice creating things in public where people stop 和 take pictures 和 ask about it, so there's an interaction that does not happen when you're just creating work in your studio. 对我来说，这才是有趣的地方. 这在体力上有点费力. 你必须忍受天气、汽车和诸如此类的事情. 但这很有趣，”他说.

Helping his students find the same fun in art that he does is essential to Plinio’s teaching philosophy. He knows that students will start enjoying the creation process when they combine regular practice with art fundamentals to develop their own artistic style.

“I usually ask my students to every day take out a little sketchbook,y can carry it with them 和 just draw anything that’s around them, 无论是环境，还是静物或物体. 它与你周围的事物建立了直接的联系. And especially for students going into 电脑动画 和 游戏艺术, 他们需要更好地了解他们周围的空间.

“不停地画画, 他们将获得在太空中看到事物的能力, but they will also start developing a way of drawing that’s personal 和 that [makes them want to share] their work,Plinio继续说道. “我认为，当他们每天或每周都进行这种练习时, 他们会开始爱上绘画. 对我来说, that will then kind of ripple throughout their entire [career] in the future… It's breaking away from being self-conscious about the final results. 只是享受画画的过程.”