My Favourite Skillshare Courses for Beginners

Two years ago, I started my journey as an artist, and back then I did not have any idea about many things. In fact, I didn’t know anything about “how to be an artist”. I didn’t go to art school, I studied communication and halfway through I signed up for graphic design. Both communication and graphic design have a creative side, but not in the way that I wanted: more to do with creating freely and less with following someone else’s concepts.

So here is my me of two years ago sitting in front of the computer with my brand-new watercolour materials and without any idea where to start. Naturally I googled “how to paint with watercolours”, and a bunch of YouTube videos showed up, and they were definitely a great start but they were not as in-depth as I needed so my search continued until I found Skillshare, an online learning platform. Skillshare is for everyone and all kinds of skills, but I think creatives will find themselves particularly happy because there are so many teachers and classes to learn from! Plus, many classes are taught by real top expert creatives like: Lisa Congdon, Kristina Hultkrantz, Martina Flor, Samarra Khaja, and Bonnie Christine, among others.

I made a wee list of classes that have helped me along the way to develop my art skills, find my creative voice and even help me run my creative business. This list is by far not a comprehensive one, it’s just a sneak peek of all the classes you can take when you sign up to Skillshare.

You can get 1 month free trial when you sign up through my link: Sign up here and start enjoying more than 20,000 premium classes.

I made this as a final project for a beginners watercolour course I took on Skillshare

Watercolour Classes

1.- A Beginner’s Guide to Contemporary Botanical Watercolour by Natalie Martin

Natalie is a wonderful watercolour artist based on Victoria, Australia. She has a very colourful and unique style, combining loose, organic strokes to create her own vision of a subject.

In this class, she takes you step by step from where to find inspiration to your own final piece of art! She talks about building confidence in your work and process, and she does it in a beautiful, simple way. She just makes painting a fun process rather than a stressful one.

A beginner’s guide to contemporary botanical is made up of 9 videos with a total length of 1h 44m that you can take at your own pace.

2.- Watercolour Workout: 14 Days of Drills to Advance Your Skills by Jen Dixon

Jen is an American artist based on the North Cornwall coast of England, and she has been selling her art for 35+ years. Whether it’s pen and ink, pastels, oils, acrylics, or watercolours, she will teach you how to bring those skills up.

This is one of the first classes I took, and I really recommend it! Having total control over your strokes is essential when working with watercolours, and she takes you through 14 days of exercises to help you improve and build muscle memory. I followed her instructions and took one lesson a day for 14 days, and it was amazing. I wish it had gone for longer LOL.

Watercolour Workout is made up of 19 lessons with a total length of 2h 42m, but you only need 15-30 minutes per day to watch the lesson and do the exercise.

3.- Watercolour in the Woods: A Beginner's Guide to Painting the Natural World by Rosalie Haizlett

Rosalie is an artist, author and educator who lives in the Appalachian Mountains and specialises in paintings of natural subjects.

 This class is gorgeous, really, even if you don’t want to paint, you can just watch it because the location, the shots and the set-up are all beautiful. The project is to paint a mushroom, but along the way, she’ll teach you how to find inspiration in the wild and capture it so it’ll be ready to be painted.

Watercolour in the Woods consists of 13 lessons, each 1 to 6 minutes long, for a total of 41 minutes. Perfect for a rainy day.

Surface Pattern Design Classes

Pattern design is a whole world in itself, and without it our world would be so boring! So here there are some of my favourite surface pattern classes.

1.- Think Outside of the Grid! A guide to building patterns that are anything but square by Kristina Hultkrantz

Kristina is one of my favourite teachers because she’s straightforward and makes the process of making patterns fun. She’s also very open when you ask anything about her business and is always willing to help.

This class is for people who are just starting or considering a career as a surface designer. She’ll teach you how to be yourself when it comes to creating patterns and how to create a simple but fun pattern that will stand out from the crowd.

Think outside the grid is made up of 8 lessons, totalling 1h 20m. Simple and fun.

2.- Intro to Surface Pattern Design: Learn Adobe Illustrator by Bonnie Christine

Bonnie is the queen when it comes to teaching Surface Pattern Design; she has a beautiful way to explain and has 15+ years of experience teaching the subject. She breaks everything down into small steps so we can digest the whole process as easily as possible. She teaches using Adobe Illustrator, although nowadays there are many other software packages you can use to create your patterns. Illustrator is still one of the faves due to the artwork's scalability once it is finished.

This particular class is for beginners, and the version of Illustrator is not the most recent one, but the class is definitely one of the best to start your journey in SPD.

The class consists of 26 lessons, totalling 3h 43m. It will take you a while to go through all of it, as it takes time to learn any new skill, but you’ll soon discover how easy and fun Bonnie makes the whole journey. Bonnie teaches an eight-week course on Surface Design called Immersion. I’ve written a blog about it.

3.- Create a Half Drop Repeat Pattern in Photoshop using Smart Objects by Mel Armstrong

Mel is a brilliant illustrator and educator from Wellington, NZ. She uses Procreate, Photoshop and Illustrator to create seamless patterns that she then licenses to make all sorts of products look pretty.

I really love her whimsical style and how well she teaches her classes. In this particular class she takes you through her own process of creating a repeat pattern that can be applied to products such as fabric, stationery and heaps of other cool products.

Create a Half Drop Repeat Pattern is made up of 10 lessons with a total of 32m learning time.

This is really a tiny tiny sneak peek of all you can learn. I hope you enjoyed reading and if you have any questions regarding Skillshare, just leave a comment or contact me directly, I’m always happy to help.

Note: When you sign up through my link you get 1 month free trial and I get 1 free month as well, it’s a win-win :D