My high school daughter is naturally artistic, so she’s always eager to complete reviews that will teach her some new techniques. Creating a Masterpiece gave us a one year subscription to their online Drawing Program for our entire family to use. Not only has my daughter used it, but my 10 year old son has joined in for a few lessons, too!
Creating a Masterpiece offers fine art lessons online, taught by Sharon Hofer. I know this woman is passionate about art, and I’ve seen her at several homeschool conventions. She stays at her booth as much as she can and does live demonstrations quite a bit! Ms. Hofer loves what she does and wants children to love creating beautiful masterpieces of their own. She breaks it down into step-by-step instructions and offers these lessons online through streaming video on her website.
The programs she offers are good for all ages and ability levels. She offers subscriptions to her products and gives you access to several levels and encourages you to incorporate art as a family activity. Isn’t it cool that a kindergartner could work alongside their high school sibling? This is the kind of flexibility that I really appreciate in a homeschool program.
You don’t have to be a homeschooling family to use this. It would be perfect for any school-aged child or adults to complete in their spare time. The lessons are short, yet thorough. Once you have your supplies and a subscription, you’re ready to get started.
Once you have purchased monthly or yearly program access, you simply login on the Creating a Masterpiece website and scroll down to the drawing lessons. The program gives you full access to all 4 available levels: Beginning Drawing, Drawing Level 1, Drawing Level 2, and Drawing Level 3.
My daughter is an incredible artist, but she wanted to do a few lessons with her younger brothers, so she chose to do the Giraffe in Cartoon and the Hoot Owl in the Beginning Drawing section, but then chose to do Drawing the Egg in Drawing Level 1 on her own.
You are able to see a preview each drawing available for each level on the main screen. Once you choose a project, it takes you to a menu that allows you to view the supply list, purchase supplies, and to view the lesson videos.
The lessons are broken up into several smaller, easy to manage videos. On that page, you will also find many other resources, such as supplies used in the lesson, helpful tips, the official project image, lesson highlights that show the step by step progression of the drawing, and some of them have a “Student Showcase” section with selections by some of Sharon’s students.
My daughter had many of the supplies on hand to complete several drawings. She looked through each of the pieces to make sure she had what she needed before getting started for the day. She’s started a list for me to purchase some more supplies so she can get started on more projects in the near future and it happy to use these lessons toward a high school art credit. I will be marking down how much time she is working on the videos and drawings themselves and counting them toward her credit hours for art this year.
The videos are broken down into small, bite-sized snippets to follow along. We all love how she shows each and every thing that she has done in the drawing so that students can follow along easily, regardless of their own skill levels. They’re easy to pause if you need more time and to rewind to go back and watch something again.
I think she did a great job on her first project!
My son tagged along with this owl drawing as well, but didn’t want me to share his art on the blog. My daughter loves owls and even had an owl birthday cake a few years ago. She had a great time working on this.
It’s really cool to watch a simple sketch and outline turn into something more intricate and detailed.
This drawing really came to life!
Grace was looking forward to the egg drawing. She loves to work on her shading and blending, and this one really allowed her to work on something that seems simple, but really has more to it than meets the eye.
How great does this look? I’m very impressed with how realistic the final drawing turned out.
My daughter said she wishes that the lessons went more into depth as far as the elements of art and the history behind some of the techniques, so I will be focusing on some of that for her to help her earn even more high school art credit using books from the library or some internet searches. This course has served as a great starting point for that research and for piquing her interest in different styles of drawing.
I can’t wait to see what else she comes up with. I will be buying her more supplies soon or for Christmas so that she can do even more work in the program, including exploring the higher levels.
I recommend this to any family that would like to have step-by-step drawing lessons for their kids. I love that you get access to all levels through a single login, and you can use it with all of the children in your family. The videos are high quality, and the final products from using the lessons and creating the art speak for themselves!
Are you curious about some of the other artwork that students can complete with the Drawing Program? Click the banner below to view more reviews and get a sneak peek into additional available art lessons: