The internet offers everything you need to learn classical painting for free – at least that’s my claim. What is taught in the classical painting schools is now passed on free of charge on the Internet by the former students. The painting schools live from the income of the tuition fees and the former students live from the advertising income through the publication of their free resources. The pressure or compulsion to attract more and more attention in order to stand out from the competition and consequently earn more money through advertising, means that more and more content providers are offering great content for free. So it happens that artists also offer their teaching materials as websites, PDFs or videos.
What you don’t get for free on the Internet is a master with a trained eye who corrects your mistakes, painting materials and a good deal of self-motivation to stick to a strict curriculum. But this article is not about that.
Here come the free resources on classical art
In the following you will find the best free resources to learn classical painting – be it as PDF, website or videos on YouTube.
Let’s start with the PDFs. Some ask you for your email address to offer you free content:
Learning to See – Paul Foxton
The blog “Learning to See” by Artist Paul Foxton is a great source for free stuff with rich content.
Free 6 step colour course – Get 6 mails over the course of a few weeks with instructions to learn to match any colour accurately, seeing values and painting subtle, natural colour.
Sight Size – Darren R. Rousar
Free email course after subscribing to the newsletter with free Bargue plates and how-tos.
The Drawing Source – Marina Fridman
Get a free eBook “The Elements of Realistic Drawing” by joining the mailing list.
Dead of the Day – Erik Gist
Free eBooks and PDFs. I can highly recommend the 30 page “Watts Atelier Figure Turorial”.
Drawing Art Academy
Free video lessons on drawing after subscribing.
Anthony Waichulis
This is a must-read for everyone! Check out all PDFs on this page they are priceless – and they’re free 🙂
Now to the free YouTube resources
There are YouTube channels of artists who make a lot of effort to offer content on a regular basis. They follow the current standard to stand out from the competition, be it a specially designed thumbnail, a crisp headline or polished info texts on the videos with carefully listed links to their own social media sites and/or affiliate shop.
There are also YouTube channels with educational videos that are not as professionally maintained, but that you absolutely have to watch.
Florent Farges:
Yupari Artist:
Cesar Santos:
Andrew Tischler:
Mark Carder:
YouTube | Website (see my blog post on Mark here)
Daria Callie:
Duffy Sheridan
Drawing Art Academy:
Real time portrait paintings on YouTube
Sometimes you don’t need no verbal instructions. Watching someone paint can be instructive, even if not every brush stroke is explained. Here are full length videos of portrait paintings from start to finish:
Real-Time Oil Painting Portrait by Master Artist
Oil Painting Portrait Demonstration by Leng Jun Artist
Watts Atelier of the Arts – Friday Night Workshop
William Whitaker Portrait Painting Demonstration
Anything I missed?
Do you have found other free resources on learning classical art that I did not list here? Please feel free to tell me in the comments, write me on Facebook or send me an email – I will put it on the list. Thank you!