THE Compton Babb Art Encounter, a fine-arts creative platform, hosted the closing session to its eight-week programme at the Sophia Training Centre, where it honoured the first batch of students with medals and prizes. The programme was facilitated to teach young artists and individuals to learn portraiture-drawing and painting and featured budding artists from the ages of 12 to 25 years old.

The Guyana Chronicle spoke with coordinator of the programme, Campton Babb, who explained the rationale behind starting the programme: he explained that he had noticed that there was need for a platform for developing artists to enable them to learn to master their craft in Guyana; and it was his decision as a local artist to help his fellow local artists by offering his skills and expertise.

“This is so vital and necessary because we have so many creatives out there who do not have the opportunity to exercise that ability within; there’s so much talent that we have within us but we don’t have too many avenues where they can actually go and learn how to use them. So many times they would be at home drawing a cartoon character, they’re drawing something on their own and they really don’t know how to move that to the next level. This to me is an opportunity where they can actually go in depth as to how can I now become a better student in this field of art; they can now become better CSEC students doing art,” Babb said.

Babb related to the Guyana Chronicle that during the training students learnt to construct the human figure, understand the tones on the human face and how it moves: “We learnt about light and dark; we learnt about shadows; we learnt about perspective.” Further, he stated that the students not only learnt practical knowledge, but always were taught to understand the value of their craft and how they can tap into those areas that can be so marketable, and to become an asset — local and abroad — spreading their wings.

A student of the programme, Shondell Marshall, related her experience, saying, “It was actually very interesting because at first I didn’t know I could be this good, because when I first started the programme, I started like two weeks late and at that time when I saw the sketches the other students were already doing, I felt like I was a bit behind, and that maybe they’re better than me and so on; but through Mr Babb’s help and guidance I was able to catch up and the art that I produced at the end surprised even me. I really think it’s a good initiative and I would encourage any other developing artists, whenever they hear about programmes like this, to take advantage of the opportunity.”

The programme, according to Babb, will be seeing a second batch sometime in the near future and will be expanding to facilitate more students in an effort to reach a wider variety of local artists.