Youtube can be a great place to learn. It is entertaining, informative, and free!
In my last post, I talked about learning from watching videos and the best places to do so. Now in this post I’m pointing out some of the best YouTube channels that I would recommend! These channels are great for beginners to learn and established artists to brush up on techniques.
CG Cookie Concept is the YouTube channel of CGCookie.com, which is a paid educational website for 2D and 3D art – but it offers a lot of freebies (Seriously, check those freebies out!)
The YouTube channel has tutorials, recorded livestreams, and some great videos on getting started in digital art. They post new videos regularly – usually every week. For people looking to try digital art for the first time, they have a great “Getting Started in Digital Art” playlist which goes over getting a tablet and setting it up to start digital art.
Ctrl+Paint is a great channel to watch when start your digital art journey. The videos focus a lot on developing good techniques in Photoshop. (so even experienced users could find it a helpful refresher!) That might sound boring, but it is important to know how to control and customize your brushes, blend edges, clean or remove linework, paint shadows, render, use masking and selection layers, etc. The videos are also very well-made and nicely narrated.
I have done a blog post on ctrl+paint before, because it is a fantastic website to bookmark and visit regularly. It is a great educational site that teaches you to digitally paint for free. On the website there are tons of free videos in their “Free video library” – way more than just on the YouTube channel.
Jazza’s channel is a great channel for beginners to explore. He has made a ton of tutorial videos ranging from many “how to draw” videos, Photoshop coloring tips, speedpaints, and plenty of videos meant to inspire and motivate. His videos are all well-made and nicely narrated. There are some wonderful fundamentals here, and Jazza has a great personality!
He also does Flash animation and has plenty of great videos on how to get into animating.
Proko’s channel specializes in human anatomy, proportion, and gesture, and has tons of great instructional videos for artists ranging from beginners to advanced. He is great at simplifying the complex anatomy of the body to make it easily understandable.
If you’re interested in drawing people, whether it be realistic portraits or super-stylized manga, having a fundamental grasp of anatomy and proportion is a must! Which is why I recommend this channel wholeheartedly.
I really like Sycra’s Channel, I like to think of it as Proko’s more stylized cousin. The videos are not as polished as some of the channels I have listed on this page so far, but the information is still great. He has a very pushed style, and also likes to sketch using traditional methods (I enjoy watching him sketch in his sketchbooks!).
Sycra has an active forum on his own website (link), where there is a great section called “Critique this!” Join the forum and post your own completed artwork for a contructive critique, or even a video paintover by Sycra.
This is actually really awesome, I’ve just started trying to learn how to draw and alot of these resources are really helpful. Thanks for making this site mate 😀
Cool
IV been subbed to Jazza and he inspires me
Hey, what about Kienan Lafferty? He’s great!
Agreed! 🙂
i love Drawing with Jazza
I love all these suggestions. I also think a good YouTuber to watch is Lavendertowne, if you’re going for a more stylized piece.
Does anyone know any good digital art websites besides CTRL paint?