10 Free Online Classes for Improving your Illustrations

Personalize your illustration skills with valuable tips and techniques from expert illustrators

Following an illustration course can help you find your own style and create highly communicative visual images.
Illustrations are not simply drawings: they are a powerful complement to the text, they can be eye-catching book covers, and they can stir emotions, whether they are pictures hanging in your home, murals on a street wall, or a simple decorative feature on your coffee cup.

There are even more applications to this art. Under the guidance of ten highly experienced illustrators, you can learn to visually interpret a concept or a written piece and turn it into a meaningful illustration. They will give you tips on brainstorming ideas and help you explore traditional and experimental techniques.

Click on the red links to access and enjoy the classes!

Free Class: Reference Images Search

An illustration is a communication tool that creatively enhances a text. When looking for ideas, you can find inspiration from other artists' work and images. In this video lesson, editorial illustrator Emma Hanquist addresses searching for such reference material and what part of the images you need to focus on to open up your idea process.

Find out by following her class, taken from her course Editorial Illustration for Magazines.

Free Class: Now Choose Your Own Book

As a practical exercise in book cover design, you can play a game of brainstorming. Choose a title and give yourself one minute to think of as many things as possible related to it. In this video lesson, illustrator Silja Goetz teaches you this technique and more, to create conceptual illustrations for eye-catching book covers.

Find her secrets by following her class, taken from her course Book Cover Illustration: Unraveling the Essence of a Story.

Free Class: The Basics of Composition

Suppose you want to know more about applying the rule of thirds, creating movement in symmetrical as opposed to asymmetrical compositions, and triangulation and visual rhyming. In that case, you will benefit from this free lesson. In this video, illustrator Marcos Chin addresses arranging visual elements on your page to create a harmonious composition.

Learn all about it in this lesson, taken from his course Composition and Color for Creative Illustration. Learn how to visually interpret a written piece and turn it into a meaningful illustration.

Free Class: Rendering Techniques and Brushes - Part 1

You can create enchanting narratives and ethereal atmospheres in your digital portraits, using some defined processes and specific Photoshop brushes. In this video, established fantasy illustrator and artist Karmen Loh shares the methodology she uses to transmit these ideas to her audience.

This class is part of the course Digital Fantasy Portraits with Photoshop, in which you learn to create dainty images with precision and skill.

Free Class: Procreate Basics

You can create imaginative portraits on Procreate, using its intuitive interface, but be sure to make the most of its basic settings, such as hand gestures, lines, and brushes, so that you can concentrate on your creativity. Street artist and illustrator Samuel Rodriguez shows you his process and how he takes advantage of the available shortcuts.

Find all these essential tips in the lesson, taken from his course Creative Portrait Illustration with Procreate, teaching you to combine lettering and abstract elements for creative digital portraits.

Free Class: Composition + Basic Lines

You can achieve composition using only a few lines that move well on the paper. Curved lines allow you to work with the emotional part of the drawing, claims artist and illustrator Marco Mazzoni. With this approach, you can look in your sketchbook for such lines to inspire you and help you develop your illustration.

Learn about his revisited classical method in this video, taken from his course Chiaroscuro Creative Portrait with Pencils.

Free Class: Freehand material

Anything goes when making drawings in sketchbooks. In illustrator Mattias Adolfsson’s lesson, he draws pens from memory and then shows us how to draw pens from imagination, making all kinds of crazy things happen.

Check out this process in this video lesson, which is part of his course: The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Art.

Free Class: Preparation - Composition

How do we approach a white page? Where shall we place the figure, and what other elements do we need to think about to help us with composition? Comic book artist Marcio Takara explains the importance of negative space, the rule of thirds, action lines, and narrative.

You can learn about all these elements and how to apply them in your project in this video, taken from his course Female Character Design for Comics, in which you learn traditional techniques to draw a female figure with volume, movement, balance, and expression.

Free Class: The Basics of Perspective

One of the biggest challenges when drawing is to translate a three-dimensional object onto a two-dimensional page. In this video, storyboard artist Alex Hillkurtz gives a clear introduction to linear and atmospheric perspectives.

Watch Alex as he draws using one- and two-point perspectives, in a lesson taken from his course Architectural Sketching with Watercolor and Ink, in which you learn to create sketches of beautiful buildings that leap off the page.

Free Class: Sphere Studies - Color, Light and Shadows

A sphere is a simple geometrical shape that helps us to really understand how color, light, and shadow work. In this video, character designer Joel Santana uses various tools on Adobe Photoshop to blend colors and add warm light and shadows to his sphere, for that 3D effect.

Find out more in this lesson, taken from his course Digital Painting for Characters: Color and Light.

These classes are free to follow until May 9, 2021. If you’d like to refer to the material after this date, you can sign up for the relevant Domestika course.

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