Recommendations: Art and Design Classes & Tutorials

Today I want to share some art tutorial recommendations. The Alchemical freebie is still on the way, but progress has slowed slightly because I started a new day job, so please bear with me. (You can checkout Alchemical Design Resources in the meantime to see the style of the designs.) I’m a couple of months into my new day job and although there is a lot of info and stuff to learn, I’m really liking it so far and my co-workers are all lovely.

The real point of this post is to share a few creative classes and tutorials I’ve watched lately, across both Skillshare and YouTube. Because I watch a lot of classes I’m only hand-picking the ones I’ve found particularly useful for my own business, but I highly recommend searching for classes that suit your needs if these aren’t quite what you’re after. It’s amazing how much knowledge and how many skills are available these days and I know it can be overwhelming!

Note: Please bear in mind that Skillshare is subscription-based while the YouTube videos should be available for free.

Skillshare Classes

Growing Your Creative Business Through Instagram – by Cat Coquillette (artist, entrepreneur + educator). I took a bit of a break from IG during lock-down as the pressure to be present started to make me feel run-down, but now that life is in a better place I’m back to social media and this class really helped to boost me into the right headspace. Lots of useful, actionable tips.

Create Animated Stories for FB & IG with Canva – by Ronny Hermosa. Easy to follow and a fun way to jazz up your IG stories and posts. You’ll need an account on Canva to complete the projects in this class.

Stage the Perfect Instagram Flat Lays to Showcase Your Work – by Peggy Dean (The Pigeon Letters). This one is short and sweet (17 minutes) but full of practical advice on photographing your work for Instagram. This is something I’ve struggled with a lot so I found this resource really helpful!

Everything by Liz Kohler Brown – I’ve been consuming Liz’s classes like a crazed person because I’ve recently got into creating art on my iPad in Procreate and most of her videos are themed toward Procreate design (with the occasional Affinity Designer for iPad class). If you’re starting out with hand-drawn digital art then I’d highly recommend checking out her class set. So much great info and she’s really easy to follow.

Introduction to Adobe Illustrator on the iPad – by Maja Faber. Having used both Procreate and Affinity Designer for iPad for a while now, I’d never thought of trying Adobe Illustrator. Which is silly considering how often I use it on my iMac! In this tutorial, Maja walks you through creating a themed illustration in Ai on the iPad Pro.

YouTube Recommendations

Watercolor Painting Techniques for Beginners | Wet in Wet Technique – by makoccino. These beginner watercolour techniques are easy to follow and show you how to create beautiful thumbnail artworks using traditional media.

Tik Tok Art Tutorials That Saved My Drawings – hosted by Panda. This is a short tutorial compilation but it’s packed with brilliant advice for novice artists.

iPad Lettering with Karin Newport – Karin features a huge range of tutorials and inspiration for iPad artists on their channel. Although their YT is titled “lettering” there are illustration videos too.

Art with Flo – Amazing channel packed with iPad illustration tutorials. I highly recommend Flo’s “You Can Draw This” series. These videos are perfect for practicing drawing and art on Procreate.

Genevieve’s Design Studio – Another brilliant channel for learning drawing on the iPad (mainly Procreate). Genevieve posts new tutorials regularly so it’s worth following their channel and enabling notifications.

How I Make Stickers | Using Cricut and Procreate – by Sara Faber. As a Cricut owner and total novice, I’m often looking for fun ways to use the software and up until now I’d never considered pairing it with Procreate to create stickers at home.