Real Recommendations on Art Courses

Hello! Let’s talk art courses. It’s been a while since I’ve shown some starter resources for beginners. My name’s Kanjon and I want to highlight a few of these once more and focus on the strategies of how to learn. Even if you’ve got some experience already, re-visiting some early concepts can be a great refresher: we’ve all forgotten some little details. Also, at the end of this, I’ve put together a new resource on my website that I wanna show ya.

My last video on this was waaaay early on in this channel. It was rather short! But pretty much all of that information is still relevant. You don’t need the most up to date art courses to learn. The core skills have basically never changed. I’ll share some thoughts on these courses on a sec, first though I want to highlight a key point: art courses can guide you towards WHAT to practice. If you already know you have a specific gap in your skills, say, in anatomy, or lighting, you can get a lot out of studies of those subjects directly.

Studies. What’s that? That’s when you take a “reference”, like a photo, and try to draw it as-is. You focus on the skill you want to build, and when you’re done, you compare that with what you did. I’ve got a full video on studies here. Anyway. The broad effect of art courses is that you begin to learn these skills of studying generally, and you can in effect teach yourself by using good references. Art is a skill you’ll perpetually learn, you never reach the end of it. But at the very start, you probably don’t know what you should try first, and “just draw” feels like some of the worst advice you can be given. Of course you must practice, but you’re probably not going to know what that practice should be.

So let’s get into it. I’m not sponsored by any of these (…though open to it!…); I’ve just gotten a lot out of them myself and want to share. One of my favorites on fundamentals, and how I got my own start in art, is Drawabox. This is an entirely free course that teaches you how to approach drawing starting with how you move your arm across the page. (Yes, there is a secret to that by the way! It involves your shoulder.) You then get into basic geometric shapes, then perspective, construction, then you start to combine all of that together to start visualizing in 3D. It’s structured in a very plain way that removes the mystery around art skill, and I think it’s pretty cool.

Drawabox touches on a “50% rule” that’s important for any kind of art course: make sure your focus isn’t completely on the course itself, and that you force yourself to try drawing without rules, without formal instruction for half of your time. Doodle even if you think you can’t. Try to draw without references and see how silly it ends up. Intentionally make bad art. Bad art is a part of your experience: recognizing that it’s bad really does help you grow. Make yourself break the rules half of the time and be silly about it.

Another resource called Love Life Drawing focuses on figure drawing: the human figure is essential to learn even if you want to draw landscapes, creatures, and abstract works. Learning figure drawing helps you break down what you think you know with how things actually are by using something extremely familiar, and that skill applies to the rest of art. Love Life Drawing has a small free course online, and then more options should you like the style of learning.

Once you’ve gotten some foundations down, you’ll start to know what you’re interested in drawing, and might know some general areas you want to practice. That’s when it’s useful to start looking at some course libraries online. Two I recommend are New Masters Academy and Proko. New Masters Academy is a subscription providing access to their catalog of videos set up in nice chunks of guided courses, and there’s a couple in there I’ve really liked. Proko offers similar courses, it’s just more a-la-carte instead of subscription based. (Normally I hate subscriptions too, but with art courses it’s sometimes worth it since you’re only really going through courses until you’ve found your footing, and then you’re done.) Both places tend to offer sales and freebies on occasion.

Beyond that, I have a couple courses that worked well for me, but I don’t want to overwhelm folks. You can find information about that stuff on my website. Speaking of, that’s been completely re-designed: all of my opinions and recommendations on supplies, courses, even reference packs are now on one page! I’m still editing some things but it’s coming together nicely. I’m planning on another section with more learn-to-draw thoughts and motivation, be on the lookout for that. Links to all this stuff are in the description and probably somewhere on the screen too.

Anywho if you’re new to art, welcome! If you’ve been practicing a bit already, share this with a friend who you think might enjoy learning to draw. Find a course you like or study on your own with some practice, and remember to be forgiving with yourself and have some fun bad-art time too. Chase that passion in your learning. Go be an awesome artist.