Who We Are

What Is It

The Visual Literacy Online Program is for both the serious student and the professional artist. This program provides access to all of the Illustration Academy lessons taught by the world renowned illustrators and painters of today.

The program is about professionals training professionals. It's about real-world training that makes you a better picture maker. This program will help you to develop your portfolio whether you are in school or a working professional. Whether you are entering an Art and Design college, or pursuing a career as a professional, the Visual Literacy Program will help you to obtain scholarships or better clients as a working professional by making your portfolio the best it can be.

This could be the sort of website an illustrator could use as a type of illustrator training course. An illustrator will be learning from illustrators about illustration. This type of illustration school is about illustrators teaching illustration as a type of illustration course, a design course, an illustrator class, and even digital painting. The Visual Literacy Program could be thought of as an extension of The Illustration Academy. Visual Literacy in this sense is just being about having a certain amount of literacy in a visual sense, in terms of illustration in particular. In no small part, The Visual Literacy Program is basically just an extension of The Illustration Academy and is like an online illustration class. Illustration has been around since the cave paintings of Lascaux, France. An illustration, properly made by the illustrator, seeks to clarify, or show more clearly the idea or subject being talked or written about, perhaps in a book or magazine. The actual definition in some dictionaries of illustration is "to clarify."

The Illustration Academy faculty is made up of the following instructors: Mark English, Gary Kelley, Anita Kunz, Chris Payne, C.F. Payne, Jon Foster, George Pratt, Sterling Hundley, John English, Brent Watkinson, and Doug Chayka. The following faculty of The Illustration Academy and Visual Literacy Program have been with The Illustration Academy and Visual Literacy Program since 1995: Mark English, Gary Kelley, Anita Kunz, Chris Payne, C.F. Payne, John English and Brent Watkinson. The following faculty joined The Illustration Academy and the Visual Literacy Program at later times: Jon Foster, George Pratt, Sterling Hundley and Doug Chayka.