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For the past few weeks I have been reviewing Beyond the Stick Figure Art School. I have been working my way through Sally’s Beyond the Stick Figure Complete Drawing Course PLUS 3 Bonus Courses. As I told my bosses at the Homeschool Review Crew… if she can teach ME to draw, she’ll have done good! Let me say this… I just might surprise you! Come along as I walk you through this review.
What I am Reviewing
Beyond the Stick Figure will provide you with 55 drawing lessons, 15 pen and ink lessons, 52 lessons in watercolour and 24 lessons in Acrylic. On top of all these lessons you will receive 30 lessons in 3D Design.
This course is for the entire family from 5-95!
Each lesson includes video, often at least one worksheet and lots of practice time.
Included is a list of materials to help you make purchasing decisions. For some of the classes having top quality materials will help your work come out better. For other classes, just use what you have a hand and make accommodations for your expectations.
About the Designer
Sally, the designer for this course, is a homeschooling parent! She received a degree in art from the Loughborough College of Art and Design in England. You can hear her English accent in the videos. 🙂
The Details for Beyond the Stick Figure Art School
There are four parts to the Beyond the Stick Figure Art School. The main part is the drawing course. Then the three bonus courses.
The drawing course has three parts to it. Part one (17 lessons) Part two (33 Lessons) and Part three (5 lessons). The set up is the same for each lesson. A video (sometimes two) along with a worksheet to print off.
Then there are the three bonus courses.
The Pen & Ink along with the Watercolour Course. Pen & Ink has two parts with 15 topics total. The Watercolour course has part 1 (10 lessons), part 2 (19 lessons) and part 3 (23 lessons).
The Acrylic course follows with 24 Lessons divided over three days. The 3D course gives us 30 Lessons divided over three days.
The three days can be a bit of a misnomer since some of the lessons are quite quick, other lessons require practice time, and yet other lessons need time for the previous lesson to dry. Completing multiple lessons in one day is quite possible.
Step by incremental step, Sally walks you through the world of art. Each lesson contains at least one video where Sally explains each step and often includes hints. These hints are there to help you develop better habits as an artist. Sally works hard to ensure the success of her students.
The worksheets open as printable PDF’s. Same window unless you ask it to open in a new window. Everyone that I opened was one page in length, and they did not each need to be printed off.
One of the aspect of the Art School that it took a while for me to adjust to was the need to mark each lesson, and then each day as complete. If you failed to do so you would get this warning reminding you to do so.
I loved that as I watched each lesson I could see clearly where I was in each days work. It gave me a goal to work toward.
How Did I use it?
The drawing course wasn’t quite what I expected. I expect lessons where I would learn shading, perspective, and a variety of other aspects of drawing. What I received were numerous lessons in how to draw specific lines, and then how to colour them in. I understand it was a very incremental process that as an adult reviewer I found myself chafing at. I do like that even I managed to create art! 🙂
Water Colour
I looked at the Pen & Ink course and thought “OH COOL”, but then decided that I’d rather move on to the Watercolour portion. I’ve done a bit of watercolour in the past but have never really received lessons. I really liked that I learned new skills, how to make grasses, and use the side of a paintbrush, and more skills. Rather neat! I look forward to completing the rest of the lessons.
Acrylics
My favourite part of the course? ACRYLICS. I was shocked! Seriously. I admittedly didn’t have the materials that would have served me best. Living in Canada, and dealing with Covid-19 restrictions and the um… rather LARGE prices for items on Amazon had me making do with the products that I had in the house. Afterall.. what if I hated acrylics.. what a waste of dollars that would have been. But I LIKE IT! I plan to do more. Just look at what I created!
I do need to explain the bottom painting. It was supposed to be a cloud painting and that was it. I felt so… UNFINISHED when I was done so I went on to complete the lesson with the one above. Then I thought, I wonder if I can do with acrylics what you do with watercolour and tried to make grass. My goal was to create a swampy region with trees in the background. Was it stellar piece of work? No. Hubby and son like the top one the best, but I was delighted that I decided to be creative and take a lesson from one part of the course and apply it to another.
3 D Design
The 3D Design Course was more difficult than I thought it would be. ADMITTEDLY I made an oops. I honestly thought I had the right kind of clay on hand, and didn’t. Therefore I needed to make do with the air dry clay I had on hand. The lad mentioned, “OH, I used it up mom!” “Gah!”
Ah well, it was still fun to make what I call a foxling. A mammal that lays eggs and guards them. 🙂 He’s not quite done in the image below.
Should you get it?
I loved parts of this course, and other parts I chafed at, but at all stages I learned something. In the drawing course I learned the importance of using guidelines to help me achieve the curve I wanted in a line, in watercolour to practice new skills. Acrylics was simply fun, playing with paint, building on skills learned in watercolour. 3D design was simply a nice break to test out working with clay again. I’ve worked with clay a lot with my lad and have built a number of items. Creating my egg-laying foxling was great, bringing an imaginative creature to life was a hoot. Now to write the story to go with him. 🙂
Beyond the Stick Figure Complete Drawing Course PLUS 3 Bonus Courses is an interesting set of courses. Worth taking the time to look at, give it a look-see, you may find that it suits the artistic needs of your family.
Social Media Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondthestickfigure/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/britladyinamerica/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/beyondthestickfigureart/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCROy5BkqT_cZvQu1dTPRYzw
I urge you to check out the 80 reviewers for the Beyond the Stick Figure. Delve into the world of artistic expression and see how you too might surprise yourself with your ability to be an artist.
Totally agree with your assessment. I enjoyed the pen and ink lessons and the acrylics lessons MUCH more than the drawing ones. I didn’t do much with the watercolor because I didn’t have a brand that worked well for the little bit I used it for on pen and ink. I think for the drawing, whatever you have is just fine. As you get into the other lessons, though, have quality that is a big higher than basic or kid-level is more important, even just to try it out well. Which is super hard right now.
it is hard right now. When I looked at the markers.. currently in Canada they are $58 for a simple set and for the recommended set I was looking at $100 and I can’t do that for an art course. 🙁 So using what I had on hand was huge part of this review.
Thank you for the review. We love to make our students happy, so here are some tweaks we have made based on recent reviews:
1. All course videos are open and do not require sequential completion–although we still recommend it.
2. We contacted Vimeo and they have improved the video experience by installing volume control and full screen options on all videos.
3. We added more options to drawing part 2 to help it move along more quickly for younger students.
thank you for your responsiveness. 🙂