Learning is a great way to improve yourself and command more value. However, enrolling in schools that require you to be physically present can be a hard undertaking. First, you may be unable to hold your job and school at the same time. Secondly, you may have to sacrifice your attention, time, and other resources to pull this feat. While this step can appear daunting, a better and simpler approach is to choose free online art camps.
Free Online Camps
The world of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has made learning easier. With a free online art class, you can gain knowledge and experience with less overhead than physical classes. If free online art classes are something you’d be willing to try, there are several hundreds of online platforms that offer what you are looking for. However, not all of them offer quality education for free. To save you from wasting your time without really learning anything, we have collated a list of some of the free online art classes that offer substance and quality.
ART of the MOOC: Public Art and Pedagogy
Workload: 7 Weeks at 4-6 hours per week
This free online art class is star-studded and offers you a chance to meet with some of the top art professors at Duke University. For seven weeks, you will have access to top art professors, including Tom Finkelpearl. Hans Haacke, Tania Bruguera. Claire Doherty, and other guest lecturers. The class is led by a Duke professor and artist, Pedro Lasch.
Also on the list of organizers is Nato Thompson, a Creative Time artistic director. The class goes deep into the artistry world and touches on a range of controversial and iconic works. Participants can expect to discuss the life, time, and works of Maya Lin, Richard Serra, and other notable names in the art world. The class also explores artists’ relations to social institutions like banks, churches, corporations, and more.
Beginners with no prior experience in art-making are welcome to join the class to learn more about the basics of their chosen interests. Students will have the opportunity to show their artistic side while receiving guidance from professionals.
Pyramid of Giza: Ancient Egyptian Art and Archeology
Workload: 8 weeks at 2-4 hours per week
If you have ever nursed the wishful thinking of studying at Harvard University, this art class offers you a chance at realizing it. The art class is led by Professor Peter Der Manuelian, a Harvard professor known for his experience in art. This class dives deep into the art from ancient Egyptian,especially the archeological masterpiece called the Giza Plateau. Students will have a chance to learn more about one of the oldest of the seven wonders of the world. The class also bounces off other topics, including culture, the Egyptian Kingdom, and how art has evolved.
Students will get a chance to study some hieroglyphic inscriptions made inside the tombs of Egyptian mummies. The class also considers the future of art, especially with technologies like 3D modeling.
Charting the Avant-Garde: from Romanticism to Utopic Abstraction
Workload: 4 sessions at 13 hours per session
This class details the history of art and how it graduated over the years. The class also studied the progression of abstraction and how artists in those years broke free from representation and figuration after thousands of years of being the only form of art known to man. If you are interested in a completely immersive art class experience, then the knowledge ride from the world of abstraction to what painting was in the 20th century from the Western perspective is for you. The class is spearheaded by the dean of faculty at SAIC, Lisa Wainwright.
Students will take on a 200+ years journey down the memory lane as they explore the earliest forms of avant-garde art. Enrolled students will also enjoy a sneak peek into the 19th-century art progression from romanticism to realism to impressionism and what the post-impressionism era offered. The class also dives into Cubism as well as its impact in the development of abstraction and how this played a pioneering role in the works of legends like Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, and Piet Mondrian.