Istebrak is an Iraqi-born Canadian currently living in New York. She teaches fundamentals and fine arts professionally full time. She studied English Literature and Professional Writing in Toronto and started teaching professionally at the age of 23. Her subjects were English, Astronomy, and the fundamentals of visual arts and design. Her tool of choice is Adobe Photoshop, with a set of custom brushes of her own design.
Istebrak founded and led the development of PortraitStudio, a reference generation software designed to build full custom studio scenes, working doubly as a key learning and demonstration tool during classes, while also offering users full studio control and reference engineering and accessibility.
Istebrak has dedicated her art and her career to the expansion of accessible art education. She runs free art critique session streams from her YouTube channel every Tuesday and Thursday at 5 PM EST. She covers beginner and advanced portraiture, concept art, illustration, environment design and composition and figure drawing. She hosts numerous community challenges throughout the year and offers a free and thriving art resource community on Reddit and Discord.
Her full video history and more can be found HERE.
“I DON’T believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution”—it’s just psychological....So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don’t have to teach. Never. ”