12 Online Illustration Courses to Master Your Technique in 12 Months

Discover hand-drawn and digital illustration courses to boost your creative development, whether beginner or advanced

The journey of a professional illustrator is marked by a path of creative development that combines passion, inspiration, and constant learning. If you want to learn techniques to kick-start your own illustration career, setting out a strategy to clearly define the next steps is key.

Your starting level doesn't matter. Whether you're a beginner or advanced, all you need is motivation and a bit of time to grow creatively. With twelve of Domestika's illustration teachers to guide you, in these twelve courses you can learn to master illustration skills in just twelve months.

From your first pencil strokes to creating compositions using digital tools to learning the skills necessary to promote and sell your works, your creative path starts here.

In the online illustration courses below, you'll learn techniques for everything from hand-drawn illustration to watercolor painting, as well as how to do digital illustration using Photoshop, Procreate, and Adobe Illustrator.

1. Courses for starting out

When you first start exploring a new hobby or learning a new skill, having great teachers to guide you and a desire to learn are essential for success.

With these illustration courses for beginners, you'll learn how to improve your drawing skills, unleash your creativity, and discover a few basic techniques to start creating incredible drawings.

Click on the red title to learn more about each course. Let's dive in!

Creative Drawing Techniques for Beginners, a course by Puño

Renowned illustrator Puño has dedicated his recent years to teaching people who believed they couldn’t draw.
As part of that mission, in this course, he shows you simple, fun, and effective exercises to unlock your creativity and awaken your inner artist.

You’ll also learn how to use basic shapes and colors to develop your own artistic style, using perspective, proportions, and the correct application of highlights and shadows.

Illustration Techniques to Unlock Your Creativity, a course by Adolfo Serra

Throughout this course, you'll learn how to free your creativity as you build your own artist portfolio and develop a world of pictorial resources.

With renowned Spanish Painter and Illustrator Adolfo Serra as your guide, you will learn a range of experimental processes and techniques to help you create a sketchbook that will become your image library, organized into sections of your choosing—objects, animals, vegetation, characters, buildings, etc.

Creative Watercolor Sketching for Beginners, a course by Laura McKendry

If you want to experiment with various techniques, why not explore the wonderful world of watercolor illustration? In this course, you'll learn how to paint exciting watercolor art with artist and illustrator Laura McKendry.

Known for her imaginative and abstract compositions, Laura will guide you on the path to enriching your sketchbook with unconventional color combinations and creating experimental illustrations which express your playfulness.

2. Courses to develop your skills

You need a solid foundation and inspirational resources to hone your creativity—after all, new ideas emerge out of a combination of knowledge and experiences we acquire throughout our creative lives.

But when you’ve mastered the basics, it’s time to carry on developing and trying out new challenges to keep your creativity alive. The following courses are designed to develop your skills and help you explore new opportunities in the world of design and digital illustration.

Vector Illustration for Beginners, a course by Aarón Martínez

A discipline that evolves constantly as creatives adapt to the latest technology, digital illustration has grown exponentially with the internet and is increasingly adopted by artists across a range of fields.

This course teaches you the foundations of digital illustration, under the guidance of expert designer and illustrator Aarón Martínez. He shows you how to use Adobe Illustrator to create basic shapes, refined strokes, and color palettes to develop a unique and striking style.

Procreate for Beginners: Digital Illustration 101, a course by Brad Woodard

If the iPad is your digital tool of choice, learn how to create professional artwork using one of the market's leading software packages: Procreate.

Teaching you to use the program from start to finish, graphic designer and illustrator Brad Woodward shows you how to create high-quality digital art in a way that resembles your natural, analog process.

Traditional Drawing Techniques with Procreate, a course by Laura Pérez

In this course, you'll learn how to create expressive illustrations with an iPad without sacrificing analog aesthetics.

Comic book artist Laura Pérez—who has worked with clients such as The Washington Post, National Geographic, and American Airlines—will show you how to experiment with and use Procreate's functions to the fullest, focusing on styles and brushes that recreate traditional techniques, such as graffiti.

Drawing Manga Characters from Scratch, a course by EUDETENIS

This course teaches you how to create a complete model sheet in pencil with proportion, volume, and movement to bring manga characters to life.

Award-winning Brazilian creative duo Giovana and Paulo, aka EUDETENIS, are experts in manga illustration. They teach you the tricks of this technique, reveal how to obtain better results, and show you how to create striking characters that express a wide range of emotions.

You'll also discover the techniques you need to create movement and character every step of the way, from the concept to your final project.

3. Courses to specialize

The author of Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going, writer Austin Kleon believes extraordinary things happen when you combine the everyday with something special.

With that in mind, now you’ve mastered the illustration basics, it’s time to adventure into more complex fields and develop a specialization.

Illustration for Patterns with Soul, a course by Catalina Estrada Uribe

This course aims to help you develop your own graphic language using patterns to create meaningful projects and illustrations with soul. You'll learn ways to get involved in socially-focused projects to effectively transmit the beauty and optimism that these provide.

A big name in illustration and print design, your teacher for this course is Colombian designer Catalina Estrada, whose clients include major brands like Starbucks, Nike, Camper, and Coca-Cola in addition to organizations like Amnesty International and UNICEF.

Illustrated Portrait in Watercolor, a course by Ana Santos

Illustrator and fine artist Ana Santos teaches you the step-by-step techniques she uses to create wonderful portraits in watercolors, combining traditional practices with digital retouching in Photoshop.

Starting from a photo, you’ll learn how to capture gaze and gesture, and to add motifs that enrich your work to create a unique and original style.

Digital Illustration with Manga Influence, a course by Akimaro

In this course, you'll learn how to create atmospheric scenes and emotive manga characters using Photoshop, as well as how to transfer complex concepts into lines on the page to create powerful visuals and narratives.

Illustrator, graphic designer, and manga expert Adriana de la Torre—aka Akimaro—teaches you how to turn your sensitivity into skills capable of conveying real emotions.

4. Courses to promote and sell your work

Once you’ve mastered your technique, one of the main challenges is understanding how to promote and sell your work. Finding clients and establishing yourself in the creative community is a fundamental aspect of professional illustration, but it’s not always easy to know how to start...

The following courses have been carefully curated to help you develop a simple and effective strategy to promote your work and reach your target audience.

From Illustrations to Merchandise: Market Your Artwork, a course by Louise Lockhart

In this course led by illustrator and independent business owner Louise Lockhart, you'll discover how to build a recognized brand, create products based on your artwork, and then sell them online. You’ll learn how to attract clients, create relationships built on trust, and share your illustrations online.

A specialist in this subject, Louise runs her own successful e-store where she sells a range of product collections based on her illustrations.

From Illustration to E-commerce: Turn Your Art into a Business, a course by Paola Yuu

Want to transform your illustrations into personalized products? Brazilian designer Paola Yuu Tabata, aka Papoulas Douradas, shows you how in this course.

Having worked on clothing, stationery, and illustration designs, she'll teach you how to create an e-commerce site from scratch so you can launch an exclusive collection of marketable products. You'll also learn how to develop a product range and use different platforms to reach wider audiences.

Ready to start your journey to creative growth?

Have these twelve courses sparked your creative interest in the world of illustration?

If the answer is yes, the new Domestika Plus subscription can help you achieve your creative goals. With Plus, you'll receive a monthly credit that you can exchange for any Domestika course to design your own plan for continuous learning and creative exploration, and you'll have access to exclusive content focused on your creative growth. The courses you choose are yours to keep, whether you renew your subscription or not.

Learning new skills and taking your creativity to a new level over the next twelve months has never been easier!