Have you seen artists teaching classes online and wondered how to get started? Or maybe you’re already a teacher and want to learn more about teaching art online. In this guide, we look at the best platform for teaching art online as well as highlighting the best apps for art students and teachers.
Teaching art online can be a difficult thing to do. First, you need to know what tools are out there and which ones you would like to use. After that, you have to figure out your audience and where they all might be located so you can build your class for them. Want to know more about how you can teach art online? Check out our top best apps for art students article.
CreativeLive
Pros:
- Professional instructors
- Excellent in-house production
- Free classes 24h a day
Cons:
- No certificates or accreditation
- Not as hands-on
- Individual courses can be expensive
CreativeLive is another platform that recruits well-known professionals as instructors, but with a slightly different angle.
Instead of big-name celebrities, most instructors are more in the line of influencers and artists. That isn’t to say that they aren’t hugely successful in their line of work, just that they might not be household names for most.
Even so, there’s some pedigree here. These are highly qualified professionals, and that’s reflected in the course quality.
Lectures from your favorite personalities
With more than 700 creative instructors on the platform, odds are you’re already familiar with a few.
Some notable personalities include Tim Ferriss, Alex Blumberg, Lisa Congdon, Mel Robbins, and Sir Richard Branson.
Assisting these experts are CreativeLive’s in-house production specialists. Typically courses are filmed in front of an audience, lecture-style. This leads to some interesting Q&A sections, as well as more dynamic instruction than simply speaking to a camera.
Courses vary in length, and are broken into short, digestible lessons.
CreativeLive is, once again, an online course platform for creatives first and foremost. Here are the main categories:
- Photo & Video
- Money & Life
- Art & Design
- Craft & Maker
- Music & Audio
Putting the “live” in CreativeLive
If you want to try CreativeLive for free, you’re in luck. As the name implies, the platform streams its courses 24 hours a day, free of charge.
You won’t have as much selection, but it’s a great way to learn more before taking out your wallet.
When you are ready to pay, courses can be purchased individually or as a subscription. Individually, they cost anywhere from $50 to $200, with frequent sales bringing that down to $15-$50 on average.
Another option is the CreativeLive Creator Pass, which unlocks 1500+ courses and a curated learning path for a single fee. This costs $39 if billed monthly, or $15 a month if you commit to a year.
You can also save big by paying for a year upfront, which costs $149. This works out to about $12 a month, which is a great value for what you get.
Domestika
Pros:
- Dedicated to creative courses
- Professional production
- Highly qualified teachers
- Inexpensive (~$10 a course)
- Lifetime access to courses
Cons:
- No professional certificates
- Many courses in Spanish with subtitles
- Finicky mobile app
Domestika is a relative newcomer when it comes to online course platforms, but it’s quickly become my go-to source for creative courses.
The entire platform is dedicated to creative courses. There are literally thousands of options for crafts, tech skills, illustration, and so much more.
I’ve written a full guide to Domestika that explains everything you need to know, but here’s the lowdown.
A platform for creatives first and foremost
As mentioned above, Domestika is filled with creative courses, but there’s more to it than that. It also serves as a kind of social media platform.
You can think of it as a cross between Behance and LinkedIn. You can share your portfolio, list yourself as open to freelance work, and even search through an integrated job board.
Most of the users are in the Spanish-speaking world (as we’ll get to in a moment), but it’s a great way to connect with other creatives.
Great course selection, with one major setback
Domestika has an incredible selection of creative courses (check out my favorites here), covering a variety of topics. Here’s the full list of categories:
- Illustration
- Marketing & Business
- Photography & Video
- Design
- 3D & Animation
- Craft
- Architecture & Spaces
- Technology
- Calligraphy & Typography
Each course is taught by a qualified professional with the help of Domestika’s in-house production team. Courses run anywhere from two to 12+ hours, and cost around $10 when on sale.
Once purchased, you can watch courses whenever you want, forever. No subscription fee required.
There is an optional subscription service called Domestika Pro, which has a few benefits for avid learners. It’s extremely affordable at just $30 a year, but honestly it’s completely unnecessary to get the most out of the platform.
The catch is that the vast majority of these courses are in Spanish with subtitles in English. There is a growing list of English-language courses, but you will inevitably need to do some reading.
In my experience, this hasn’t been a big deal. Most courses are very visual, so it’s still easy to follow the content. Plus, there’s a fairly generous 14-day refund policy.
If you’re not sure subtitles are for you, check out a few of the rotating free Domestika courses on offer. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Udemy
Pros:
- Huge quantity of courses
- Lifetime access to courses
- Highly qualified teachers
- Frequent course sales
Cons:
- No professional certificates
- Course quality varies
- High non-sale prices
If you’ve spent any amount of time with online course platforms, odds are you’ve encountered Udemy. It has an astounding amount of courses uploaded by teachers all over the planet.
As one of the largest online course platforms around, it has something for everything. That includes not just creative courses, but also courses for business skills, leadership, programming, and more.
Quantity and quality
When I say that Udemy has an astounding amount of courses, I mean it. The platform boasts more than 130,000 online courses in 2021, with new options added every week.
With that many options, the odds are good you’ll find something that interests you. However, not all categories on the site are directed at creatives. Here’s the basic list:
- Development
- Business
- Finance & Accounting
- IT & Software
- Office Productivity
- Personal Development
- Design
- Marketing
- Lifestyle
- Photography & Video
- Heath & Fitness
- Music
- Teaching & Academics
Of these, the most popular are related to business and programming. Still, there are plenty of options for creatives if you search for them.
I’m also happy to report that the course quality is overall quite high. Although they’re user uploaded (so technically anyone can create a course), Udemy does run quality control to keep low-effort content off the platform.
That said, it doesn’t quite match up to platforms with in-house production like Domestika.
Confusing price structure
Although Udemy courses and the platform overall are great, there are some issues with the pricing structure in my opinion.
Retail pricing can reach $100 or even $200 per course, but frequent sales and discounts reduce those prices by as much as 90%.
That’s all well and good, but it leaves you with the feeling that anything less than 90% off is overpaying. Even if the price is still perfectly fair for what the course offers.
And to be clear, this isn’t entirely on Udemy. Instructors can set their own pricing, so by listing the price as permanently 90% off it feels like a bargain.
Still, if you do your research before buying you can find some real gems. There are also a variety of free courses available, although they tend to be much worse than their paid counterparts. Treat them as a test of the platform, but not indicative of the overall quality.
Skillshare
Pros:
- Huge quantity of courses
- Short, focused courses
- Some free courses available
Cons:
- No professional certificates
- Course quality varies
- Requires persistent subscription
Skillshare is yet another online course platform that needs little introduction. With about 2000 free classes and tens of thousands more available for a single subscription fee, it’s one of the largest and most popular platforms out there.
Previously Skillshare also had an extremely generous two-month free trial, but now that’s been reduced to a two-week free trial.
That’s still enough time to enjoy a lot of content before shelling out $19 a month (or $99 a year) for a subscription.
I’ve written a full guide to everything you need to know about Skillshare, but here’s the brief version to get you started.
Hit or miss course quality
One of the defining aspects of Skillshare is the fact that courses can be uploaded by just about anyone.
In the past this lead to an overwhelming amount of low-quality content, but nowadays the platform has put more curation into place. It still doesn’t match up to other online course platforms, but overall the experience is much better.
In a way, this is also one of the platform’s strengths. Even if you don’t want to become a teacher, you can watch courses about the same topic from different teachers to gain a bit more perspective and insight.
All you can eat creative courses
The other truly defining element of Skillshare is that everything is unlocked with a single subscription, called Skillshare Premium.
In total, there are about 30,000 courses available covering a variety of topics. These are mostly creative, with a few tech courses and foreign language courses, too.
Here’s the full list of categories:
- Animation
- Creative Writing
- Film & Video
- Fine Art
- Graphic Design
- Illustration
- Music
- Photography
- UI/UX Design
- Web Development
- Business Analytics
- Freelance & Entrepreneurship
- Leadership & Management
- Marketing
- Lifestyle
- Productivity
There’s a lot on offer here, but if you’re looking for just one type of course or topic, you may be better off sticking to single-payment platforms instead of subscription services.
But if you want to learn tons of different skills and become a Jack of all (creative) trades, Skillshare is probably the best subscription there is.
Conclusion:
Whether you are a professional artist who want to do something on your free time or an art student who wants to start teaching what you already know, these are the most important things you need to know before getting started.