In my previous post, I have mentioned that I will be taking up online courses in drawing, color and light theory, and many others to refresh what I have learned and to learn new things. I graduated from art school years ago but I feel like my knowledge is inadequate so I'm craving for new stuff.
I have found Domestika through some ads. It is a site that offers online courses from professionals in different fields like photography, illustration, social media marketing, video editing, etc. They have a lot of courses that I really want to learn and they are at great prices too. The courses range from $6-$20 on a discounted price (though as you know with marketing, that's probably the normal price and not discounted lol).
My craving for knowledge led me into finding these courses. I already have a plan in my head to take each course one by one in probably a span of a month... You can buy each courses with no subscription but since I will be saving money by subscribing to Domestika Plus, that's what I did. It is their subscription method (monthly or yearly) which you can pay $6 a month and get 1 course per month with that. On top of it, you will also get 20% more discount if you want to buy more courses in a month.
The first lesson I took
I took the Basic Principles of Drawing People from Imagination course yesterday since I really want to learn how to draw figures from without relying too much on references. I am an advanced level artist so I can draw quite ok with figures BUT I can't draw them from imagination. I draw from references that I take myself since I wasn't interested in acquiring skills to draw from imagination. I have always focused more on making better composition and concept skills rather than the technical ones but now I want to improve my technical skills. So...
In this course, it was presented on the video that students will learn how to make the figure-drawing easier with the basic 3d shapes. It indicates that it's a beginner level course so I expected they will teach down to the very basic of the course.
The artist is amazing and looking at his introduction was encouraging.
The first part of the course was the introduction of the teacher. It was okay and made sense to let us know who's gonna teach us and to also give us a sense of confidence with the course. The first intro post was 5 min long... then came another one which was 10 min long... It was kinda red flag to me that there's a whole 15 min just the artist talking about himself considering the limited amount of videos in this course but I went with it anyway.
The first lesson was about drawing basic 3d shapes. I learn from experience, so I was also drawing and following the lesson. The teacher explained about x,y,z and cameras like the ones in 3d software but in my opinion it was really unnecessary. He even drew a cube with cameras facing it which honestly didn't make sense at all considering it took a big chunk of the limited time we have per lesson. For beginners, it could be understood with simple length, width, and height, but of course he gotta tell you x,y,z axis and cameras now...
It was still nice since I can already see how making 3d shapes as basis for drawing figures can be really helpful with getting you to see proper perspective and so you won't get lost with it.
On lesson 2, these shapes were now finally being applied so we can draw a full human body. It was nice to see how those shapes make sense and as you can also see in my sketch that it was SO MUCH easier to draw with the 3d shapes beneath it. Damn damn damn I was like "how didn't I do this before??".
During this lesson though I already have my annoyances.
This is only the second lesson and the teaching already felt rushed. It's not shown on the sketch but the teacher started drawing full on skeleton of a human just to show us how it would look like on that angle. There's nothing wrong with that, but the lesson was only 12 minutes long... while he was drawing random things, he wouldn't talk or explain anything on why he was doing that. We were literally just watching him draw like he's drawing on a demo. What's worse is it felt like half of the video was just him drawing...
I would love to see artist draw something in real time but not on a course which has limited time.
In that sketch... to be honest I only learned about tapering but didn't really explain why it is needed and why perspective will actually affect how the shapes are formed. Just him showing his drawing skills on camera...
On the third lesson, it was already on a "how to draw an advanced mannequin". Ok, this was really rushed and forced. One thing I realized was this WASN'T for beginners. Since the teacher was literally not explaining basic anatomy to make sense of the course, the students need to have lots of drawing from imagination experience beforehand. Otherwise, you wouldn't understand shit.
Ok I'm not actually expected like a full college fine art drawing course on this one but the teaching was actually lost since the teacher was just drawing for 1 minute without actually talking nor explaining why the thing is drawn like this or that. These sketches that I made were in fact drawn because I was bored lol.
There wasn't even an explanation of the basic things a beginner should know about figure drawing, like the legs should have curve and the foot should be on this angle, stuff like that. The one I sketched on the upper right were the ones I was expecting from him to say while he was drawing his shit on camera but instead we had nothing. XD
Oh and by the way, for the 3 lessons that I watched, he kept on saying "less is more" to describe the hiding of the other arm when you're drawing from a "kinda-side" perspective (See the sketch at the bottom with the red writing). Why on earth would you say that? "Less is more" is something you would say to describe a subjective thing like for an art taste or style but definitely not something you should say when teaching anatomy. Human anatomy is a complex thing to learn and it needs rules, so definitely needs something else than "less is more".
That's the only phrase he keeps on saying to describe that but didn't actually explain why it will be like that. For beginners who knew nothing about drawing, they wouldn't understand shit why "less is more" makes sense.
It was so disappointing that I just stopped watching it.
More rant
This course have a really interesting title and has actually potential but unfortunately is very misleading. First of all, it's not for beginners and most importantly the teacher was terrible. He's a good artist and can draw straight without having to use some lines but he's not for teaching.
I finally read the reviews and 80% of them looked fake. :( They were 1 sentence reviews mostly and some others looked like a legit review actually. But I wish I read them more first before actually spending 6 bucks on this lol. What's worse is that you can't actually filter the good from the bad reviews, which obviously was made that way so you'd have to scroll a lot to see any negative ones... The negative reviews have the same sentiments as mine.
I checked on reviews on other courses too and it also looked like they were "just making courses for the sake of making courses". You will learn something for sure but you will struggle cos they skip so much on the important ones and very misleading with the level you should be on.
After this experience, I have concluded Domestika just found creators famous on Instagram and decided "Hey let's make you a masterclass!" even though most of them know nothing about teaching.
I also cancelled my subscription and to be honest there are far way better videos about the subjects on Youtube for free. There are lots of Youtubers out there who are actually passionate about teaching and will give you out far more information than these try-hard Domestika courses. I'm glad I stopped it early on. I will just go find some other creators to learn from from now on.
Do you have any art Youtube channels you could suggest to me?I would really appreciate those! :D