How To Get The Most Out Of Online Art Classes
Artwork from 2021. Anne Kearney
In 2021, I took myself to art school. Just like many students around the world, I took all my classes through Zoom and uploaded homework for review. But unlike most students, my year was entirely of my own making – I hacked my own experience.
I didn’t start the year intending to spend so much of it in class. But that is the path I found myself on after doing something that is simultaneously very important and often neglected – I took the time to reflect.
It’s easy for me to get caught up in making art and to fail to spend time and energy reflecting on what I’m doing. But at the start of 2021, I realized that looking at where I was with my art was the best way to determine where I wanted to go. I brought all my finished pieces from the last two years into my living room, stared at them, reflected on them, and wrote about them.
There were many things I was happy about – my work felt like me, it had gotten better over time, and I had completed more pieces than I thought. But I also saw new directions I might take and things that I wanted to improve – my sense of composition, my use of values, and my fluidity with color mixing to name a few. With that in mind, I turned to classes.
In the end, I took more than ten classes and workshops – from color theory, to composition, to new approaches to figure drawing, to the history of landscape painting.
I not only learned more about art, I also learned how to get the most out of online art classes.
Getting the Most Out of Online Art Classes
Choose your classes wisely. I used to be an art class dabbler, taking whatever seemed interesting. Over the years, this has given me a broad foundation of skills. But my approach this year was much more focused. After I spent time reflecting on my past work and thinking about where I wanted to go next, I looked for classes that might help me develop the skills to get there.
Block out sufficient time for the course. I’ve learned that despite my good intentions, I rarely go back to assignments I didn’t have time to complete. I’ve learned to clear the decks as much as possible before the course starts.
Get your studio ready beforehand. For me, it was much easier to dive into a course if I gathered all the materials I needed, put everything else out of sight, and tidied my studio before the first class.
Do the homework and follow the rules. I was surprised by how many students did their own thing instead of working the way an instructor recommended. Catherine Kehoe, for example, had us spend a long time capturing accurate self-portraits from a mirror and then breaking down the drawing into a limited number of feature-independent shapes. The next step was to paint in an equally exact and prescribed way. And yet there were people who more or less ignored these instructions because they, “just don’t work that way.” I wondered why they were taking the course.
Trying a new approach – maybe especially if it feels uncomfortable – is a way to learn something new. You can decide later if there is anything you want to integrate into your own work.
Take feedback where you can get it, but don’t expect too much. The one area where non-degree online courses really fall down in comparison to university courses is feedback. The amount of feedback I got in my 2021 courses ranged from “a little” to “a little bit more.” Giving feedback is time-consuming for instructors so you often don’t get much of it.
The bigger problem with feedback is that everyone seems so afraid of offending. Instructors are aware that students are paying for these courses and they don’t know much about the personalities of the students and what kind of feedback they want – or can take. Because of this, I’ve found that feedback is often mostly encouraging with some gentle suggestions for how to improve. If, like me, you want stronger feedback, you may have to look elsewhere.
Take time to reflect on the class. I wish I had taken time after each class to consolidate my notes and highlight the things I want to think about in the context of my own work. Instead, I let things pile up and so have been spending quite a bit of time over the past months revisiting my class notes. For me it’s time well spent – there was a wealth of information in these courses and I don’t want to let the gems fall through the sieve that is my brain.
Pinocchio reflects. Flashe on paper. Anne Kearney
What’s Next?
This year, I’m taking a break from classes in order to get back to my own work. But as part of that work, I intend to reflect on how I can apply some of the things I learned last year. I’ve pulled out exercises that I found particularly useful and I will be revisiting these. I’ve made lists of techniques I want to try incorporating into my work and general principles I want to keep in mind and I’ve posted these lists in my studio.
Information that is not integrated into your existing way of thinking tends to be forgotten or compartmentalized – put in a box that can be opened up but is unlikely to ever influence how you think or what you do. I paid for the information in my classes, I’ve put in the time to build knowledge, and now I need to go that extra step to make it mine.
Making Art Classes Work for You
The past ten or so years has seen an explosion of high-quality online art classes and the pandemic has only accelerated this trend. In-person classes may be better, but online classes have the huge advantage of being accessible and more affordable. There is no way I could have taken so many classes with such a high caliber of artists within a year if the courses were in-person.
Several of my teachers this past year mentioned that the many opportunities to take and teach workshops online is a game-changer for art education. Just make sure that the game works in your favor.
What classes are you taking? How do you get the most out of them?
