Are you someone like me who loves the feeling of pencil on paper but sometimes wishes you could easily ctrl + Z your mistakes without wasting time and material?  Or maybe you’re an aspiring digital artist willing to take your skills to the next level. Whatever your goals, online courses are a great way to get started.

In this Best Courses Guide (BCG), I’ve selected the best free and paid digital art online courses for you from over 2K digital art courses in our catalog and across the web to help you learn digital art skills effectively.

Key tools in digital art – Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, and Procreate – are also covered in some courses in this guide.

Click on the shortcuts for more details:

• Top Picks
• What is Digital Art?
• Stats
• Why You Should Trust Us
• How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them

Here are our top picks

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What is Digital Art?

Digital art encompasses artwork that incorporates digital technology in its creation. Some of the different forms of digital art include digital paintings, illustrations, and extends to digital photography, videos, and sculptures. These works qualify as digital art when produced, altered, or displayed digitally, according to Adobe.

Why are Digital Art Skills Important?

Digital art is also backed up by a ton of media outlets for artists on the web, from opportunities to develop content for social media and digital marketing, to animation and game development.

For instance, there are nearly 5,000 jobs available for digital artists on Glassdoor, hundreds of openings on LinkedIn, and dozens of freelance jobs on Upwork. Also, the average salary for a digital artist is $135K in the US (Jan 2024)!

Stats

• Combined, these courses have accrued over 256K enrollments
• 3 courses are free and 6 are paid
• The most-represented course provider in the ranking is Udemy, with 5 courses
• The digital art subject is followed by over 7.8K learners on Class Central.

Best Comprehensive Digital Painting Course for Beginners (Udemy)

The Ultimate Digital Painting Course – Beginner to Advanced is perfect for beginners and more experienced artists needing to revisit the foundations of drawing: forms, perspective, light interaction, and color theory.

With over 60 different projects, learners will transition from basic techniques to creating advanced art. Additionally, the course includes bonus sections on photo-realistic paintings and character design, along with valuable insights on building a social media portfolio.

What learners will gain:

• Mastery over digital painting techniques and drawing fundamentals
• Ability to paint various textures, materials, human faces, and landscapes
• Knowledge on how to colorize black and white paintings and paint from imagination
• Guidance on building a social media portfolio and what art directors look for.

“This was my first experience of digital art and Jason and Austin have walked me through the whole process, breaking it down so as not to be too daunting. It isn’t easy teaching an old dog (me aged 60) new tricks but I really enjoyed the challenge and would highly recommend this course.” – Guy B., Udemy learner

Best Digital Sketching Course (Udemy)

Every digital drawing starts with a sketch. In Ultimate Guide to Digital Sketching: Beginner to Advanced, you’ll learn techniques used to create digital sketches and images to lay the foundations for great artwork.

This course doesn’t require any specific application or tool, so you can apply these skills to any software including Adobe Photoshop or Procreate. After completing this course, you’ll be able to create your own portfolio of digital art and concept art.

You will:

• Learn to digitally sketch from life and imagination
• Improve sketches with advanced digital techniques
• Build a solid portfolio of digital and concept art
• Gain versatility by applying skills across different programs.

Best Character Coloring and Painting Course for Beginners (Udemy)

As we talk about digital art, how can we forget about characters for animated films, games, and digital comics? Here’s your chance to learn character coloring and painting using Photoshop: Character Art School: Complete Coloring and Painting.

Taught by Scott Harris, a high level multi-genre illustrator, painter and concept artist, learners are guided through various styles including comic book characters, manga, anime, and digital painting, with applications to traditional tools as well.

You’ll gain:

• Mastery in coloring and painting characters across various styles, including comic books, manga, anime, and digital art
• A deep understanding of multiple coloring techniques and how to apply them to create professional-level art
• Practical skills in digital painting and how to translate these techniques to traditional art tools
• Confidence in character art creation, backed by a solid foundation in color and light theory.

Best Vector Art Course with Adobe Illustrator (Udemy)

Adobe Illustrator Advanced Vector Artwork teaches you the skills you need to create any type of vector illustration using Adobe Illustrator. Even if you’re not familiar with Illustrator, you’ll learn how to use it from the very basics.

An experienced instructor with over 20 years in the CG industry, Widhi Muttaqien will guide you through the core concepts and the secret techniques through hands-on projects covering all types of vector illustrations.

You’ll gain:

• Mastery over various vector illustration styles
• Advanced techniques for real production environments
• Skills to create icons, logos, book covers, and more
• Foundation in graphic design through vector illustration.

Best Free Procreate Digital Painting Tutorials (Art with Flo)

You Can Draw This! is ideal for those who prefer a more flexible and practical approach to learning digital art and illustration. To take this course, it’s better that you have some experience in using Procreate or similar apps.

These tutorials are easy to follow and will take you through all the steps of the drawing and painting process. Each video covers one type of drawing from start to finish such as landscape, graffiti. mandala, 3D text, animals and many more.

You’ll learn:

• Techniques for creating various digital art styles
• Step-by-step guidance on drawing and painting in Procreate
• Procreate’s tools and features
• Tips for creating animations and special effects.

Bonus: Art with Flo is also giving away a free bundle of 70+ brushes for Procreate and other freebies by signing up to their treasure chest.

Also Great Free Procreate Tutorials for Drawing Cartoon Animals (Genevieve’s Design Studio)

To all the animal lovers out there who have used Procreate before, Animals is your chance to learn how to draw cute cartoon animals in Procreate with these simple tutorials. Each video will teach you how to draw a different animal from start to finish.

You’ll learn:

• Techniques for sketching and digitally painting a variety of animals using Procreate
• Step-by-step guidance on character sketching, adding colors, and the basics of shading
• Tips and tricks for creating magical, whimsical, and holiday-themed animal illustrations
• How to animate your drawings to bring furry, feathered, and finned creatures to life.

Best Course for Aspiring Pixel Art Artists (Udemy)

If you want to create cool pixel art graphics for video-games, then Pixel art for Video games is for you.

Taught by Marco Vale, an artist in the games industry since 98, this course will teach you all you need to know to get started with your own pixel art using Adobe Photoshop. You’ll start with the basics and move up to more advanced techniques to give your work that professional look.

What learners will gain:

• Mastery of foundational and advanced pixel art techniques
• Skills in creating detailed pixel art graphics, including line work, shading, and textures
• Ability to animate characters and create video game mockups
• Knowledge in drawing pixel art in various perspectives, including top-down RPG and isometric views
• Understanding of color theory to enhance pixel art creations.

Also Great Pixel Art Course for Beginners (Skillshare)

Pixel Art Mastery – for Video games – PART 1 (Beginner) will teach you all you need to know to get started with your very own pixel art for video games.

The course is divided conveniently into sections, each dedicated to a topic and ending with a practical challenge.  Additionally, enrolling in this course grants you access to a Discord community where you can connect with fellow artists and game developers.

You’ll gain:

• A thorough understanding of pixel art basics, including software selection, lines, shapes, and color theory
• Skills in designing characters, backgrounds, and items for video games
• Knowledge of animation techniques specific to pixel art
• Practical experience through challenges at the end of each section
• Access to a supportive community of pixel artists and game developers.

Best General Digital Painting YouTube Tutorials (Proko)

Digital Painting is a free series of tutorials that will teach you different aspects of digital painting. You’ll learn the basics of digital painting as well as painting skin tones, working with light, tools, techniques and tips, and also some common digital painting mistakes. Moreover, you’ll also take a look at creating digital paintings in Adobe Photoshop.

You’ll learn:

• Techniques for storytelling through environment and light in digital paintings
• Character concepting from loose sketches to final paintings
• How to paint realistic skin tones and understand how light affects color
• Tips and tricks for using Photoshop effectively for digital art
• Strategies for incorporating 3D tools into your digital painting workflow
• Methods to achieve a traditional painting look with digital tools.

Why You Should Trust Us

Class Central, a Tripadvisor for online education, has helped 60 million learners find their next course. We’ve been combing through online education for more than a decade to aggregate a catalog of 200,000 online courses and 200,000 reviews written by our users. And we’re online learners ourselves: combined, the Class Central team has completed over 400 online courses, including online degrees.

As far as drawing on iPad is concerned, I (Archisha) have used apps such as Autodesk Sketchbook and Tayasui Sketches. And on my desktop, I’ve drawn in Photoshop using wacom tablets.

Besides that, I am a Guided Project Instructor and a Beta Tester at Coursera, having tested many courses before they’re officially launched. I have taken over 50 online courses in various subjects.

My experience as an online learner and teacher has given me some perspective on what to look for in an online course. I used my experience to evaluate each course in this list.

How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them

Trying to find “the best” can be daunting, even for those of us who live and breathe online courses. Here’s how I approached this task.

First, I combed through Class Central’s Catalog and the internet to find a variety of free and paid open courses, some with certificates. You don’t need to enroll in a university to learn about digital art.

When choosing courses, I considered the following factors:

• Renowned Institutions: I looked for recognized institutions in digital art
• Instructor experience: I sought instructors with extensive experience in digital art and engaging presentation styles
• Popularity: I checked numbers of enrollments and views to find popular courses
• Course content: I examined courses that covered a range of topics and presentation styles, including the basics and more advanced topics. I watched some course videos to sample courses I hadn’t already taken
• Learner reviews: I read learner reviews (when available) to get a sense of the quality of each course, leveraging the Class Central database with its thousands of course ratings and reviews written by our users as well as available course provider reviews.

Then, I defined the scope for these recommendations. A digital art course can cover various topics, so I chose top courses from a range of sub-fields.

Ultimately, I used a combination of data and my own judgment to make these picks. I’m confident these recommendations will be a reliable way to learn about digital art.

Fabio has revised the research and the latest version of this article.