Patterson senior racking up art awards

It may be his first year in the parish’s Talented Art Program, but Patterson High School senior Robert David is setting the student art world on fire.
First it was the Louisiana High School Athletic Association Prep Classic Poster Contest in which his artwork beat out more than 200 others to serve as the official poster and program cover for the 2014 Allstate Sugar Bowl Prep Classic.
Next came the Louisiana Education Loan Authority Holiday Art Scholarship Contest. David will receive the top prize of a $2,000 scholarship to a Louisiana university at his May graduation. In that contest, his art bested over 140 other entries.
Then, he beat out 200 of his St. Mary Parish peers to win the St. Mary Parish School Board Christmas Card Drawing Contest. His art depicting a yellow lab puppy in a Christmas sleigh on the bayou graces the school system’s Christmas cards.
All this from a student who was told in his freshman year that his art wasn’t good enough to gain him a place in the Talented Visual Arts Program.
At the time he primarily was drawing anime, Japanese animations characterized by colorful graphics, vibrant characters and fantastic themes.
“I brought that to our first talented art teacher. She said it wasn’t good enough. She basically just didn’t give me a chance to get in the program,” David said.
His current teacher, Reagan Beaubouef, taught art at Patterson Junior High for the last 10 years, but she never taught David, so she wasn’t able to identify his talent.
“He slipped right past me because I would have normally caught that at the junior high level and made sure he was in,” Beaubouef said.
During his sophomore and junior years, various problems with submission deadlines and lost artwork left David out of the art program, he said.
When the freshman teacher said he wasn’t good enough, “I kind of got a little rebel soul, and so I decided to try harder,” David said.
The senior’s self-taught skills grew out of an innate passion for creating art.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I just liked to pick up a pencil and scribble on papers and whatnot, even if it didn’t look good, just trying to make it look good,” David said.
Then he started going to websites that teach drawing step-by-step.
“I plan on attending either Nicholls or UL. The art scholarship I just won has to be to a four-year university, so I’m going to try to use that to my best ability,” David said.
He said fine art is what he would like to do, but “that makes me a starving artist until I have the money saved up to open a gallery.”
Beaubouef said detail is David’s forte.
“He’s kind of a slow and steady guy. He’s not pumping (artwork) out every day. He pays a lot of attention to detail. He’s not a mass producer,” Beaubouef said.
David said his favorite medium to work in is acrylics. His teacher, however, said the colored pencil-like Prismacolors are what he does his best work in.
“He’s amazing with that. That’s what the LELA and LHSAA (contest entries) are,” Beaubouef said.
As for what he likes to illustrate?
“I grew up in Louisiana. It’s a beautiful state. It’s a big influence. I like to hunt and fish, so I do a lot of swamp scenes,” but David said he can draw pretty much anything.
David, the son of Robert David and Dezica Broussard, said he currently is working on a Bourbon Street landscape for a state-wide contest and scholarship opportunity.