Learn to be an artist (8 helpful sites)
An artist without formal training is usually referred to as “self-taught.” It’s not a term I use myself because it seems to imply I figured everything out for myself (spoiler alert: I did not). I couldn’t draw well until I was taught how. Then it was it was a matter of practise. I drew for hours and hours, from life, from magazines and books, and a little from imagination. Here are some drawings from life in my high school sketchbook:
Learning to paint was a bit trickier because my high school art teachers weren’t painters (a ceramicist and a graphic designer) and couldn’t offer much guidance beyond the basics. There were certain effects I wanted to achieve but couldn’t figure out. I’m not sure I’d heard of the internet when I finished school. For sure YouTube hadn’t been invented. So I muddled through, but I loved learning about art theory and art history, and spending lunchtimes in the art room persisting with my paintings.
So after a spontaneous introduction to intuitive art which re-ignited my art adventure in a big way three years ago, I was determined to pick up my art education where I’d left off. Enter, the internet. If you’re reading this, you know about the internet (I’ll hazard a guess you’ve found YouTube as well) so I’d love to share with you the sites I’ve found most useful in the process of “self-directing” my learning as an artist and developing my own art practice to date. It’s an ongoing process.
If you can study an art degree, or get to lots of in person workshops, do that. But if that’s not practical (side-eye at COVID-19) you could dive into online resources like these:
Art21 is an amazing site to learn about the practice of contemporary artists around the world, through documentary-style television segments and written content.
Art Prof has the ambitious goal of replicating an art college education, freely accessible online. Founded and led by Professor Clara Lieu, along with other Teaching Artists, Art Prof has an abundance of guides, videos, and an enthusiastic community on Discord.
Drawabox teaches drawing by starting with the basics and putting them together methodically.
Flora Bowley is an intuitive painter with free and paid resources on her site. As an affiliate, if you visit Flora’s website from my page and decide to purchase certain courses, I’ll receive a fee (and spend it on paint, not gonna lie). I got a lot of value from Flora’s free materials before I eventually bought the Fresh Paint course, so I would list her site here even if she didn’t have an affiliate program.
Smarthistory is a wealth of art history information via articles and videos.
Talking with Painters is a podcast by artist Maria Stoljar which gives great insight into the thought processes of contemporary Australian painters.
Tracy Verdugo is an Australian intuitive artist with a variety of free and paid courses available.
Will Kemp Art School has both free and paid content to teach traditional drawing and painting techniques.
Of course there are many more online offerings (and books are a thing) but if you’re trying to figure out how to develop your own unique and authentic art practice, I hope some of these links will be as helpful to you as they have been to me. Enjoy!
(PS. Are you wanting to “get back into art” or just restarting the journey? I’d love to encourage you and share any information I can that may help. You can connect with me here.)