Hello, this is where I’m going to record my experiences with all of the art courses I’ve taken. These are my opinions. I will add a short mini-review to each of them, and link a full review if I decide to write one.

I’m not a professional artist. I’m just rich enough to afford these. You can look at my social media posts here to determine for yourself if I’ve learned anything. (I will probably not meet your expectations).

However, I do have teaching experience outside of art, and am confident in my ability to assess the teaching quality of each course, who they’re oriented for, and if they were a good value.

I am not sponsored by any of these courses. There are no affiliate links. And I’m financially lucky enough to afford these courses at consumer prices (or publicly available discounts). I will not be holding back on any of these.

I will also be including free courses that I find to be of sufficient quality. This is both for comparison, and to shed light on quality free resources as well.

Review Format

• Price: How much did I pay for it? How much is MSRP? Does it go on sale often? Is it a good value?
• Platform: How is the platform? Is it easy to access course content? How restrictive is the DRM? Is it fun to use? Is it available on mobile?
• Target Audience: What level do I feel this course is taught at? What genres and mediums does it teach? What languages?
• Content: What’s the course about? Is it high quality? Is there information here that I can’t get anywhere else? How long is the course? Was the length of the course useful or was it full dead space?
• Teaching Quality: Evaluating the teacher themselves. Do they explain concepts clearly? What style of teaching do they use?
• Other Thoughts: Anything else that I didn’t go through with the above.

Reminder to please use Control+F to search through this page for courses that you’re looking for.

Let’s get into it.

Tier List

S Tier

These are courses I would recommend to everyone. Either extremely useful or have very high value per cost.

Sinix Design’s Anatomy Quick Tips (YouTube)

• Price: Free.
• Platform: It’s a YouTube playlist. Aside from YouTube ads (use an adblocker), it’s very accessible.
• Target Audience: Beginner to intermediate artists. Covers both drawing and painting. Course language: English.
• Content: Covers almost all parts of the body.
• Teaching Quality: Very high. Examples of different types and mediums are shown. Diverse examples in body typing as well.
• Other Thoughts: It’s an extremely useful anatomy supplement to any other learning, and doesn’t cost any money.

A Tier

Great courses. Still a recommendation, but might be restricted to a certain style or isn’t applicable to everyone.

Mogoon Course (Coloso): Fundamentals of Stylized Character Art

• Price: I paid $207 using a Coloso VIP coupon. MSRP was $257.00 at time of purchase. I price tracked the course over about six months, and it never got a discount more than $30-40.
• Platform: Coloso. Annoying DRM (that has issues with Windows), three device limit. Best experience is probably with the mobile apps. Occasional issues with video playback with longer videos. Some player crashing on mobile apps.
• Target Audience: Beginner-Intermediate
• Content: Lots of useful content. Covers the fundamentals that artists interested in anime style paintings need.
• Teaching Quality: Great. Spent a lot of time diving into topics and wasn’t afraid to go into the science topics. Individual class sessions were usually split into theory portions (where the concepts were taught), and application portions (where the instructor demonstrated). Course language is Korean with English subtitles.
• Other Thoughts: I feel like the hype around this course is pretty justified. It covers a lot of the same material as the Marc Brunet course, but in an anime style painting lens.

Gharliera Course (Coloso): Creating Your Own Unique Characters

• Price: I paid $124.50. MSRP at the time was $249.00.
• Platform: Coloso. Annoying DRM (that has issues with Windows), three device limit. Best experience is probably with the mobile apps. Occasional issues with video playback.
• Target Audience: intermediate. Course language: Korean with English subtitles.
• Content: cyberpunk theming is very cool. content was useful and high quality. useful discussion around finding references and inspiration.
• Teaching Quality: Very good. Instructor does an excellent job explaining their process. Course language is Korean with English subtitles.
• Other Thoughts: this course is likely going into A or B tier for me.

B Tier

Above average. Would still consider these useful courses to recommend. Might be niche knowledge. Might be a teaching style that didn’t work for me. etc.

Marc Brunet’s Art School (CubeBrush)

• Author’s note: I’ve watched through the vast majority of the content in this course, but I’m still going through with the curriculum and self studying. I do believe that I’ve seen enough to make a review of it though.
• Price: I paid $420.00. MSRP is $600.00. This course is perpetually on sale around the $400 mark though, so don’t pay the full price for it.
• Platform: CubeBrush. Videos can be watched directly on CubeBrush (with subtitles). Or can be downloaded. Very convenient and great format.
• Target Audience: Beginner to Intermediate Artists. It covers most of the topics you would learn at a traditional art school, but is often abridged, and there often isn’t much explanation to why certain tasks need to be done for homework. Course language: English.
• Content: Provides a full week-by-week class curriculum to use alongside the videos, which is an excellent resource for those wanting a beginning-to-end course. Course content itself was pretty useful, encompassing most topics that I would need. Focus is definitely on the “western concept art” style though.
• Teaching Quality: Above average. The videos are actually quite old at this point. It’s clear that Marc’s teaching has gotten much better in the past few years on his YouTube channel, but that’s not to say this course is bad.
• Other Thoughts: Has a very strong English speaking Discord community. As much as I dislike paid discord communities, this one is one is active and has great resources. There’s also option for buying just the first course module for about $40, which should give you a good feel for the course (and also includes access to the Discord). Mostly this course gets a B rank because of its overall price, but it may be worth it for those who want a more comprehensive English language course with a strong community.

Chyan Course (Coloso): Drawing & Coloring Anime-Style Characters AND Chyan Class+ (Coloso): Designing Eye-Catching Anime Characters

• Note: Class+ is the upgraded version of the regular
• Price: For the original course: I paid $197.50 (MSRP $225.50). For Class+ upgrade: $130.00 (I think this was a special offer that they aren’t running anymore). — My total cost: $327.50
• Platform: Coloso. Annoying DRM (that has issues with Windows), three device limit. Best experience is probably with the mobile apps. Occasional issues with video playback.
• Target Audience: Intermediate for the main course. Beginner for the Class+ Section, since that one covers more basics of drawing in anime style. Course language: Korean with English subtitles.
• Content: Heavy emphasis on composition and character art throughout the course. Felt very much like a crash course for people who already know the fundamentals, but want to get into character art (like those from gacha games). Not much content about drawing specifically in the “anime” style until the Class+ section
• Teaching Quality: Quite good. Even though I was a beginner when I first took it, I did still feel like I learned something. Coming back to it at an intermediate level, I still feel the teaching quality is good. Later parts of the course that do different variants of the same painting did get repetitive though.
• Other Thoughts: I liked it. But I think if you’re still starting art it’s not the best recommendation.

Eri Cruz Course (Coloso): Line Art Techniques for Aesthetic Character Portraits

• Price: I paid $27.30 (on a deep Christmas discount). MSRP at the time was $136.50.
• Platform: Coloso. Annoying DRM (that has issues with Windows), three device limit. Best experience is probably with the mobile apps. Occasional issues with video playback.
• Target Audience: Intermediate. Course Language: English.
• Content: Short course targeting a very specific art style, and how to draw in it. Content was high quality and an intermediately level artist would be able to start drawing in it immediately.
• Teaching Quality: High. Eri Cruz does a great job going over exactly what components make up her style, and keeps it short and sweet.
• Other Thoughts: Really appreciate how simple this course

C Tier

These are courses I consider average. There’s nothing special about them, but you’ll still learn stuff. Teaching style might not be a fit for everyone. Might have minor issues that affect the course quality

John Kafka Course (Coloso): Elevating Character Illustrations with Distinctive Colors and Textures

• Price: MSRP at time of purchase was $192.50. I used a VIP coupon to bring my price down to $142.50.
• Platform: Coloso. Worth mentioning that this course splits its course videos into 30 minute chunks, which significantly reduces the amount of issues with the video player.
• Target Audience: Intermediate. Course assumes that you’re already somewhat familiar with shape, form, and other drawing stuff. Course language: Korean with English subtitles.
• Content: Mostly about coloring. There are portions about color theory, but the practical portions follow the specific painting style of the instructor, going from black and white to color using gradient maps. There’s also some parts of the class dedicated to photobashing to make backgrounds.
• Teaching Quality: It’s fine. The theoretical portions of the class I found to be much better than the practical (paint-along) portions.
• Other Thoughts: Honestly, the course left less of an impression on me than expected. I like the instructor’s art style a lot, and I did appreciate learning how to the color variations were made with it.

Solkorra Course (Coloso): Capturing Stylized Movement with Dynamic Poses

• Price: I paid $91 using a coupon. MSRP was $143.00.
• Platform: Coloso. Annoying DRM (that has issues with Windows), three device limit. Best experience is probably with the mobile apps. Occasional issues with video playback.
• Target Audience: beginner to intermediate.
• Content: Has some good insights on expressing what you want to draw with lines quickly.
• Teaching Quality: Good enough. The class was short enough where issues around audio quality weren’t an issue. Generally succinct and useful. Course language is English.
• Other Thoughts: The class was short, but useful. Probably wasn’t worth the cost to me, but I did learn some helpful stuff. I was really suprised that any human could sketch as fast as Solkorra actually.

Yaoyao Ma Van As Course (Coloso): Capturing an Entire Story within an Illustration

• Price: I paid $13.85 (on a very deep New Years discount). MSRP at the time was $138.50.
• Platform: Coloso. Annoying DRM (that has issues with Windows), three device limit. Best experience is probably with the mobile apps. Occasional issues with video playback.
• Target Audience: Intermediate. Course language: English.
• Content: Very much oriented toward a certain style, which was what drew me to it. Only goes through one painting (with two variants) over the entire course.
• Teaching Quality: It was fine. Early course the teaching was fine, but a lot of the later course was just watching the instructor draw mostly silently for hours.
• Other Thoughts: It was fine. I’m happy with the price I paid for it.

D Tier

Below average. Course might have issues that make it difficult to recommend. Or there are better courses that are much cheaper.

Cindy Law Course (Coloso): Fundamentals of Semi Realistic Character Illustration

• Price: I paid $94.25 (on sale). MSRP was $188.50.
• Platform: Coloso. Annoying DRM (that has issues with Windows), three device limit. Best experience is probably with the mobile apps. Occasional issues with video playback.
• Target Audience: Beginners. Very much a draw-along-with-me style course. Course language: English.
• Content: Covers semirealistic painting. Doesn’t go enough into the why for me, but I think it’s fine. Most of the content can be found at a higher quality elsewhere.
• Teaching Quality: Poor. Much of the class time was spent sitting and waiting for the instructor to finish a drawing. Perhaps the expectation is for the student to copy and follow along
• Other Thoughts: I was left pretty unsatisfied with this course. Really felt more like I was watching someone’s drawing process timelapse than actually learning much.

E Tier

Pretty bad. Generally would consider these having significant issues.

Nothing here yet.

F Tier

Detrimental to humanity.

Nothing here yet.

Courses Not Yet Rated

Completed Courses – Review In Progress

zero808w Course (Coloso): Drawing Monochromatic Characters Using Lineart

• Price: $15.45 after special 90% off Black Friday in Summer Promotion (2024)
• Platform: Coloso.
• Target Audience: Intermediate. I’d say a beginner could take this class, but you’ll get the most out of the class if you can already draw cleanly and want more info about rendering in a graphical black and white style.
• Content: Scope of the class is limited to black and white illustration. Later parts of the course with the demo painting do drag on, but the early parts of the course (lecture portion) are very rich in content.
• Teaching Quality: Very high. Instructor is a strong teacher and properly goes through topics, diving down to fundamentals and technical detail that’s usually glossed over.
• Other Thoughts: TODO. Class will probably be considered A tier. Definitely underrated.

Marco Bucci (YouTube): 10 Minutes to Better Fundamentals

• Price: Free
• Platform: YouTube
• Target Audience: Beginner – Intermediate
• Content: TODO
• Teaching Quality: TODO
• Other Thoughts: TODO.

Courses Currently In Progress

Guweiz Course (Coloso): Master Class: Cinematic Illustrations

• Price: I paid $162.38 (using a 25% off Easter coupon). MSRP at time of purchase was $216.50.
• Platform: Coloso. Worth mentioning that this course splits its course videos into 30 minute chunks, which significantly reduces the amount of issues with the video player.
• Target Audience: TODO
• Content: TODO. Focus on storytelling with illustration is quite useful. Will make more notes as I’m further in the course.
• Teaching Quality: TODO. Extremely high. First impressions of the teaching quality are excellent. Class seems to be extremely well structured. Course language is English.
• Other Thoughts: TODO. Class is very long, around 46 hours. If it continues to be as high quality as my first impressions, it will probably end up in A tier.

Takashi Course (Coloso): Thick Painting Techniques for Glamorous Character Illustrations

• Price: $19.95 after special 90% off Black Friday in Summer Promotion (2024)
• Platform: Coloso.
• Target Audience: TODO
• Content: TODO.
• Teaching Quality: TODO.
• Other Thoughts: TODO.

Course Wishlist

• Toniko Pantoja’s 2D Animation Course on Gumroad
• Sungmoo Heo’s Course on Coloso
• Sangwoo Park’s 3D Blender Background Course on Coloso
• Sangwoo Park’s Intro to 3D Character Rendering on Coloso
• Proko Courses. Haven’t picked out any specific ones yet, but I do have plans to try them eventually.

Final Thoughts

Thank you for reading!

One final thing to leave with you. This is how much money I’ve spent on all these courses: $1641.78. Stonks.

Feel free to point and laugh. Your readership is appreciated. And I hope this page has helped you!