Two Tips for Those Taking Their First Online Art Course
If you're about to take your first online art class, you may find the advice here useful.
Set up a designated studio space in your home
It's important to have a designated art-studio space in your home that you can use throughout this course. This will allow you to keep your paints, pencils, and canvases in one spot at all times (which means you won't have to go searching for them before every class) and will mean that you won't have to spend time clearing clutter off your kitchen table or rearranging your furniture before each class, in order to set up your makeshift drawing station or erect your easel.
When deciding where to set up this homemade art studio, you should try to pick a spot near a sunny window, as natural daylight is the best light in which to see the true colour of your paints or colouring pencils. This will be important if your art course is going to cover colour theory or if you simply want to be able to accurately evaluate colour mixtures that you create for your paintings.
If your home is also occupied by animals or children, your studio space should also be somewhere that they cannot easily access. This is important as, for example, your cat or your toddler can climb up on your drawing desk, knock over the turpentine or water you use for your oil or watercolour paintings, and spill it all over your finished artwork. If you need this artwork to be assessed by your teacher in order to complete the course, this incident might lead to you being unable to finish it.
Consider buying or borrowing a high-quality PC monitor
If possible, you should aim to borrow or buy a high-quality PC monitor if you do not already own one. The reason for this is as follows: when you take an art course, you are usually provided with a lot of visual references and tutorials. Your teacher may, for example, demonstrate how to draw something by using a pencil and paper or they may hold up art books to point out features of famous paintings or sculptures. They may also provide models or objects for life-drawing classes.
If you're taking the course online, you'll need to view all of these visual references and tutorials through a screen. If the screen in question is a small one that's attached to your laptop and it has a low-resolution and some poorly-calibrated colour settings, then you might struggle to see smaller details or certain colours. By ensuring that you have a large, high-resolution screen, you'll be better able to absorb all of the visual information your teacher provides via this online course.