WVCSD Artist of the Week: Erik Augusta

For Warwick Valley High School senior Erik Augusta, art isn’t something he does — it’s everything he is. A digital artist and world-builder with a vision entirely his own, Erik has spent his high school years pouring himself into his craft. By the time he reached senior year, he had accumulated roughly four times the art credits required for graduation.

Erik first picked up a pencil with real intent in third grade, when he wanted to sketch a character he and his friends were playing in a game. “I wanted to jot down what that character looked like,” he said. “And when I did that, it just spiraled and went down a rabbit hole, and now I’m here.”

Erik has attended Warwick Valley schools from elementary school onward. While he liked art, a structured classroom approach in which everyone focused on one activity at a time didn’t always suit him. High school changed that. Selected for Foundations of Art as a freshman, he found the freedom he had been looking for. Sophomore year, he enrolled in Drawing and Painting, and everything clicked. “I had gone from not knowing how to use watercolor to being able to use it to convey something,” he said, “while also realizing I can use whatever I want — the characters I create, anything I want to do.”

Those characters are at the center of everything Erik does. Over the years, he has developed a cast of original figures and built around them a world he calls NetherGarden, complete with its own power system and lore. Each character’s abilities — known as “petals” — are tied to a specific flower and its meaning, a concept he traces back to a floral design class he took in his sophomore year. “When I’m making a personality for one of my characters, I attach a flower to them to try and match the personality correctly,” he said. At their full power, his characters experience a “blossom” — when their petals erupt into full bloom.

_{To the right and below are four of Erik's characters: Braeden and Neige posing for their "Vogue covers," and Lux (large character) and Palette (small charater) shown together on the tarot card design.}

His influences range from the combat design of Zenless Zone Zero by HoYoverse to the concept art of Riot Games, whose character splash art Erik has studied closely and worked to emulate. That dedication, supplemented by YouTube tutorials, fashion design coursework, and hours of independent practice, has produced real growth. “I honestly have no idea what happened,” he said of the jump in his work, “but I think I got more serious about it.”

That growth recently earned Erik recognition beyond the classroom. He was selected as the featured student in a week of interviews hosted by the Scholastic Writing & Art Keys (SWK) organization, centered on digital art and artificial intelligence — a topic he feels strongly about. Art teacher Kristen Spano helped him find an angle that let him speak to his own work and how it differs from AI. “I just feel like there’s no soul in it,” he said. “You can’t convey anything using AI because you didn’t put the work and emotion into it.”

Erik credits the Warwick Valley Visual Arts Program and Ms. Spano in particular for giving him the creative space he needed to grow. “I like that my teachers and counselors have given me full freedom to do what I want,” he said. “In Portfolio class, I’ve used my characters for every single project, and I intend to keep doing that.”

This fall, Erik visited the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) with his mother and came home with his mind made up. He will enroll there after graduation, pursuing illustration with a minor in game concept design. His goal is to become a game concept artist — one whose characters connect with the people who encounter them. “My only goal would be: as long as one person finds this character close to their heart as I do with so many others, then my job is done,” he said. “And if someone hates this character to their guts because of their personality — I did my job too.”

His advice to younger artists is simple: stay persistent and trust your vision. “If you’re drawing something, someone is going to see it eventually,” he said. “So embrace your work and let others see it. Let them deal with it!”