5 Online Courses and Sites for Creative Education

I'm one of those people that actually misses school after graduation. I miss the structure; the assignments; and the direction. I think that's why I'm drawn to online classes. Sure, I could read a lot of this stuff in books, but I like having a teacher, and sometimes even feedback. Below are five different sources of online creative courses that I'm currently interested, some I've tried, and some are completely new to me.

Alisa Burke

Alisa Burke is one of those artists I'm sure I've seen before online, but I'm just now getting reintroduced to her work and her online classes. Alisa offers a very unique set of courses, from general creativity to sketching, painting, print making, photography, and more. Her classes range in price between $30 and $50, and most (if not all) have unlimited access after registration. I have yet to take one of her courses, but I havethere is one that I will be signing up very soon.


Skillshare

Skillshare has been my go-to source for online classes for over a year now. When I feel the need to sharpen a particular skill, or I want to learn something completely new, I go to Skillshare. Most recently, I've used it to learn calligraphy and a little Photoshop.

Skillshare used to be a pay-per-class site, where most classes cost between $10-$30 each and included lifetime access. They now seem to be switching to a membership-only fee structure, which is only $10 a month for unlimited access to every course they have available. This has been nice for me, since I can easily try a class, and move on to something else if it wasn't what I was looking for. I'm really interested in their photography and typography classes right now, like this class by Brandon Rike, which teaches you to create your own custom type. If you're new to Skillshare, you can get your first month for free by signing up with my Skillshare link here. I'll earn a free month, too.

Craftsy

I've known about Craftsy for a while, but I guess I've been hiding under a rock lately because I didn't know about their paid classes. They do offer free mini online classes, but I'm more interested in their full classes, such as portrait sketching, watercolor painting, and this product photography class. Classes on average seem to range from $20-$35, but they do go up to $50 or more.

Lynda

Lynda is a site I've heard about for a long time, but have yet to use. Mostly, it's because it requires at least a $25 per month membership fee, which I am not ready to commit to; however, Lynda seems to be very professional and teaches more technical topics. I almost signed up when I wanted to learn Adobe InDesign, but I've decided to put that on hold for a while. I am interested in this 33 Laws of Typography course. Have you used Lynda.com? What classes did you take? What did you think of them? Is it worth the membership fee?

Pattern Camp

I dabbled a bit in pattern design on skillshare. I designed my pattern, got prepared to digitize it, and got distracted. I never ended up finishing the pattern design class. A few months ago, I heard about Jessica Swift's weekend Pattern Camp course, which is basically a boot camp for pattern design. It sounded like what I needed - everything you need to know to design and digitize patterns in 2 days. The cost was reasonable, Jessica is inspiring, but ultimately I did not sign up because October was an extremely hectic month for me, both professionally and in my personal life.

I am really excited to hear that Jessica will be offering the course again in February. The October session got really good reviews, and Jessica has shared some examples of student work from the class. If you want to register, you can sign up to be notified when it opens here at the Pattern Camp website.

Have you taken an online class you really enjoyed? What was it?