Fresh, Affordable and Really Instructive Online Drawing Lessons

​Looking for a good free online drawing tutorial?

​Up until recently I would haven’t been able to recommend any. Fortunately this has changed.

​One of the habits I coach on Coach.me is drawing. 

Many clients come to me thinking I’m going to teach them to draw, rather than help them establish a regular drawing habit.

Once they find out that I’m not a drawing teacher the next question is almost inevitably,
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“Can you recommend any good online tutorials for learning to draw?

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Until lately, my answer has been no. 

Most of the free ‘how to draw’ sites I’ve visited look like leftovers from the days when personal email addresses were long number strings. 

(Yes, I’m THAT old.) 

Tiny, single-spaced text and the kind of examples that make your heart sink. I’m loathe to recommend a site with such a lousy user experience even if the content is good. 

And most of it isn’t. 

An intro to drawing lesson talking about value scales? Please!

As for paid-for online drawing courses, I really can’t say.

I’m not about to shell out a bunch of cash to find out if they deliver what they promise.

And the sample classes - when there are any - generally don’t give me enough of a feel for the full course that I’d recommend someone else pay for it.

So when I stumbled across Dorian Iten’s website, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

At last, a drawing website I can recommend to my clients - and, of course - to you, dear readers.
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But Who is Dorian Iten?

Dorian is a Swiss artist and teacher living in Spain. He has taught at numerous art institutions across Europe and the United States and currently works as the Digital Art Program Coordinator at Barcelona Academy of Art.

Being such a fan of 'scratching with the masters', I love that Dorian spent four years immersed in old master drawing and painting techniques in the art-filled Italian city of Florence. And I love even more that in his teaching, he combines these traditional techniques with cutting-edge creative technologies.
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Clean and Clear - Just What a Drawing Website Should Be!

Dorian’s website breathes a welcoming, yet stylish professionalism. Just visiting his bright and airy blog (enviously well-designed!) is enough to start you on the road to better drawing. 

Forget the dry titles of the aforementioned 90’s style drawing sites like How to do contour drawings. (Yawn.)

Dorian’s site is full of videos and posts with intriguing titles. 11 Things many artists don’t see and How to Build a Learning Machine were two that I felt compelled to read - and I don't even need to learn to draw!
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Courses to Suit Your Budget - Starting at Free

Aside from the blog, Dorian offers plenty more content at price points to suit every pocket, starting with everyone's favourite - FREE.

Start with his free step-by-step handout on How to Draw What You See.

Then progress to The Accuracy Guide.

This is a short drawing course which shows you various techniques for getting proportions right when drawing.

It contains 

• 25 min video explaining different techniques you can use to improve your accuracy
• 20 min demo video of the techniques in action
• 2 PDF’s - a Cheat Sheet and a Guide

What does it cost? It’s up to you. Dorian generously offers it as Pay What You Want.

(Here's a post I wrote about Pay What You Want pricing.)

If you’ve worked your way through all these resources, and you’re still hungry for more, then you'll have to open your wallet to move onto Mastering Light & Form.

This is a full course on understanding light – Dorian’s specialist teaching topic.

I’ve only seen the introductory video for this course but my coaching head was immediately reassured when Dorian said that the first step would be to set goals for study, and parameters for recognising whether you had achieved them.

Having seen the rest of Dorian’s material, I’m totally confident it will be helpful, well-presented and good value.

Be warned. This one has grown-up’s pricing. Available through UArtsy, it costs $196.

(If you want more of a taster, before you commit to this one, watch this recorded webinar in which Dorian talks about the course with Ryan Kingslien, founder of UArtsy. You'll get to learn how to draw realistic shadows at the same time.)

Time to Improve Your Drawing Skills

So if you’ve been meaning to get your drawing up to scratch, now’s your chance to get some top class free tuition. 

Dorian Iten’s classes are beautifully-presented and packed full of really useful tips to improve the accuracy of your drawing.

Hop over to Dorian’s site and get started straight away!

PLEASE NOTE: This is a personal recommendation only. There are no affiliate links contained in this post. Images used with permission.

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