I am FAR from good when it comes to art – I barely draw a good stick person (seriously!)! One thing that can be difficult in homeschooling to find is a good art program – at least this has been my experience. Enter … “You ARE an Artist!” at chalkpastel.com. When looking over the online video art courses, our family was in the mood for Spring [even though it was still Winter] so we went with the “A Simple Start in Chalk Pastels – Semester 2” course (as the description says it covers spring and summer tutorials). This course offers 21 lessons that you can work through in any order and at any pace you desire.
Online Video Art Courses
But, before I get ahead of myself, let’s quickly talk about “You ARE an Artist!” This site covers learning {soft} chalk pastels. There are two options for learning — you can buy ebooks or you can sign up for online video art courses. All art courses are appropriate for ALL ages (if they can hold the chalk pastel, they can do the drawing! And I, as an adult, really like the course too!). All courses also have lessons of differing difficulties from easy to advanced.
Ebooks currently available cover things like: Christmas, Easter, Winter Games, Sharks, Landmarks, Space … and MUCH more!
Online Video Art Courses currently available are: A Simple Start in Chalk Pastels (you can choose: a full year, Semester 1, Semester 2), Space, Easter and Spring.
How Do You Use Online Video Art Courses?
Ok, so, now let me share my thoughts about the online video art course we signed up for —
This day in age there are A LOT of homeschool things available online so I am always curious what the “dashboard” is like in these courses. (The dashboard being where the parent goes to work through the course.) For me, that says A LOT about the program itself – how easy is it for me to find what I need. (Hopefully VERY easy!) I have to say I absolutely LOVE the dashboard in “You ARE an Artist!” It is SUPER SIMPLE yet VERY THOROUGH!
Let me show you what I mean … here is when you login and then a simple click on “My Courses” at the top and it shows you the course/s along with how much of the course/s you have completed.
When you click on the course, it shows you actual detail of what you have completed within that course. It shows each tutorial, its complexity and whether or not it has been completed. SUPER EASY!
Since you can work through the course in whatever order you want, you can choose them out of order if you want – and you’ll still be able to easily know which you have completed and which you have not.
The Video Art Lessons
So, now the FUN stuff! The VIDEOS and the ART! In general, the lessons are 5 – 10 minutes in length. Our family decided we liked watching the entire video lesson first, then getting our paper and pastels ready, and then watching it again while we work through the actual art for that lesson. Most of the time we would watch and listen a little bit, then pause to work, then watch and listen and then pause the video to work some more – that seemed to work the best for us. I LOVE that it makes it so easy to do it this way!
Here is my nine-year-old working on his bird nest.
Here is his final picture…
And here is my final picture…
Remember when I said I couldn’t even draw a stick figure back at the beginning of this post? Well, that is the TRUTH! And yet … here is a bird’s nest that you can actually tell it is a bird’s nest! If that isn’t proof of a good online tutorial, I don’t know what is! (Even I was impressed with my nest! *grin*)
Here are a couple of our other creations … in this one, my 20-year-old son joined us (who also enjoyed the lessons!):
And another one…
An important thing I hope you have noticed is that each picture is a bit different – something I ** LOVE ** about these lessons is that it is SUGGESTED that you add more to your picture if you want! Creative FREEDOM! Love it!
So, overall, our family has been very impressed with the online video art course and we look forward to finishing it!
You might also enjoy checking out Heather’s Review of a different course back from 2013 titled, “A SIMPLE START IN CHALK PASTELS ART CURRICULUM REVIEW“.
ChalkPastel.com is having an introductory sale on their newest video art courses. Half off for the first few days! Maybe Art in Space or a Birds Video Art Course would interest your artists?
Here’s praying you have fun learning!
Dawn is a woman of God who is married to the love of her life. She works part-time, homeschools their two boys (since 2008) and loves animals. She enjoys learning what the Lord will provide for each day. You can find her over at Guiding Light Homeschool.
Great post, Learning drawing is the most complicated part. But if you have an expert so you can learn easily. Now a day there are so many organizations available who provides online course for the beginner artist to improve their drawing skill. Thanks for sharing.