Hello there!

I’m Elena, otherwise known as Ms Elena, Ms Lena, Teacher Elena, Teacher, Jiejie, Jiejie Elena, sometimes mistakenly Mrs Elena and ofcourse the famous “cher” (which is the colloquial shortform for ‘teacher’). I am a design graduate from NTU, currently a self-employed art teacher and trainer, while doing design and illustration on a freelance basis. My portfolio website houses some of my works under my commercial name, ellustrate. I started my art teaching career 3 years ago as an assistant to my friend who opened a wonderful art company of her own, The Amazing Art Shuttle, at which I am still teaching. It was from there where I caught on the wonderful feeling of sharing with children the love of creative arts. At present, I am also part of the wonderful teaching team at Mastereign Visual Arts and Vivarch Arteliar where I teach fine art workshops in primary and secondary schools. Recently in the beginning of October this year, I have started my own line of private art classes in homes as well, reaching into the homeschool community and teaching the children from their homes. I am thankful that within a short one month, I have kick-started a number of classes and is progressing and developing the curriculum at a great pace!

As you may know, being a part of almost everything can get rather chaotic as most of my days are spent dashing from schools to home to centers and back to homes with instances of getting lost due to my poor sense of direction as most of the time, I find myself heavily dependent on the iphone Maps that goes wonky at times. Carrying a huge bag of art ‘barangs’ while holding an A3 white board, I usually dash into class still managing a simple smile and a cheerful, “Hi!” or “Good morning class!”.

Yet as I connect with these small and big children from different walks of life, in schools and home, through the learning experiences while bathing under the joys of creativity and art, there were many great takeaways and meaningful reflections; as they have taught me as much as I have taught them.

So let me share with you my artistic voyages with all these amazing and wonderful children and teens and their creative minds!