10 Best Courses to Learn Illustration

Illustration is a good skill to pick up as a designer - you can use it in a variety of design projects. It is great for creating custom-made designs that work for a specific project, or campaign. Illustrations are original pieces that become a powerful tool to capture audiences, especially in aspects such as bringing brand awareness to businesses.

It also provides realism that you may not get in other designing aspects, while also creating a lasting impression. If this is something you’d like to pick up, here are 10 illustration courses to check out.

1. The Beginner's Illustration Masterclass

A beginner-level course, this is described as a quick and easy way to learn how to use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and GIMP to master digital illustration. The Illustration Masterclass, offered by Edu Evolution, provides students with numerous downloadable resources. The course covers certain topics such as how to use royalty-free. It also says that you don’t have to know how to draw to attend this course.

Also, at the end of the course, students receive a certificate of completion.

• Good for: Beginner designers.
• Duration: 4 hours and 20 minutes.
• What does it cover: Creating illustrations using free or paid software, learning ways to boost creativity, understanding image creation practices regarding copyrights and free stock images.
• Cost: $84.99

2. Digital Illustration for Beginners in Adobe Illustrator

Concentrating on Adobe Illustrator, this beginners' course teaches you that professional illustrations and vector drawings are within your reach. The beginner-level course comes with six articles and various downloadable resources. You can use these resources during the lessons that go over subjects such as the Pen tool, the Pathfinder tool, the Shape Builder tool, and the Width tool that are all part of Illustrator.

With this course taught by a professional artist, you’ll get first-hand accounts of the real world views into the art and business of illustration.

• Good for: Beginner designers.
• Duration: 3 hours and 17 minutes.
• What does it cover: Creating vector illustrations and understanding different elements in great illustrations.
• Cost: $84.99

3. Character Illustration: Drawing Faces, Figures & Clothing

This course is conducted by professional comic artist and illustrator, Gabriel Picolo. Creating memorable characters is a skill that you can use time and time again, adding that certain something to an otherwise bland story. This course teaches you how to do that and help the character grow. The course goes over figure movement and poses, the four core facial expressions, proper use of color, textures, clothing, and more, and finally, how to give your character emotion and personality.

In the course, you will even learn how to give personalities to these characters and bring them to life.

• Good for: Beginner and intermediate designers.
• Duration: 1 hour.
• What does it cover: Exploring movement and poses with figure drawing, drawing expressions, adding color, and creating a character that exudes personality.
• Cost: Must subscribe to Skillshare. New subscribers are entitled to one free month.

4. Digital Illustration: Learn to Use Procreate

Learning how to use Procreate is a good start if you are picking up illustration. Procreate is a digital illustration app that is exclusively available on Apple's iPad. This course will teach you everything to note when starting out with Procreate to create illustrations including using brushes, sketching new layers, adding colors and more. Overall, this is a good course for beginners who want to start using Procreate.

• Good for: Beginner to intermediate designers.
• Duration: 1 hour and 7 minutes.
• What does it cover: Getting started with Procreate and using tools such as brushes, selection tool, and layers. This course also teaches you how to create backgrounds, add final effects and tweaks before exporting your work.
• Cost: Must subscribe to Skillshare. New subscribers are entitled to one free month.

5. Digital Illustration with Illustrator and Photoshop

If you’d like to master digital illustration using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, this is a great course for you. In this course, you’ll be learning how to make an illustrated poster from the conception of the idea, right up to the final artwork. You will also be taught techniques on creating textures and shadows, as well as how to refine your details. However, do note that the course is conducted in Spanish, but it has English subtitles.

• Good for: Beginner designers.
• Duration: 3 hours and 42 minutes.
• What does it cover: How to make an illustrated poster, textures, shadows, and creating simple animation to turn your poster into a GIF.
• Cost: $47.71

6. Digital Illustration: Make a Custom Character Illustration

Covering basics of Adobe Illustrator CC to more advanced uses such as developing concepts sketches to digital illustrations, this is a course packed with knowledge for those looking to learn illustration. You can apply what you’ve learnt here to create branding items such as characters for logos, or even, create characters for items such as books and t-shirts.

• Good for: Beginner to intermediate designers.
• Duration: 1 hour and 15 minutes.
• What does it cover: Using Adobe Illustrator to create fluid vector graphics and how to use key tools. Making infinitely scalable artwork and developing concept sketches.
• Cost: $44.99

7. Digital Illustration for Beginners

Learn from Laia, a Spanish artist that is known for her distinct art style and illustrated novels. Here, she will be teaching you how to create illustrations from start to finish, including illustrating expressions, body types and more. You will get to explore the world of composition, storytelling and digital coloring, as well as how to create your own illustration from scratch.

• Good for: Beginner designers.
• Duration: Over 2 hours.
• What does it cover: How to draw from different angles, drawing characters of different ages, learning expressions, hairstyles and more.
• Price: $39.99

8. Become a Digital Illustrator

This is quite a comprehensive course with a collection of videos where you can learn how to use different software including Adobe Illustrator, Procreate, Adobe Fresco, and Adobe Photoshop. You will also pick up on how to draw vector graphics which includes the nitty gritty of coloring and details, while also designing your own characters. To top it off, you’ll earn a LinkedIn certificate that you can add to your profile.

• Good for: Beginner to intermediate designers.
• Duration: 1 day and 11 hours of content (you can finish it in your own time).
• What does it cover: Using various softwares popular for illustration, designing characters, creating illustrative design, adding details and more.
• Cost: You must subscribe to LinkedIn Learning. New subscribers can enjoy a one-month free trial.

9. Procreate for Beginners: Digital Illustration 101

Another beginner course, this one focuses on using Procreate to create professional artwork. You’ll learn the essentials of Procreate - a key tool in illustrating - as well as how to customize your interface, learn how to draw on your canvas, work with layers and essentially, everything you need to create illustrations on Apple's iPad Pro.

• Good for: Beginner designers.
• Duration: 4 hours and six minutes.
• What does it cover: Essentials of Procreate, customizing your interface, drawing on your canvas, working with layers, selection and transformation tools, making adjustments and exporting, as well as sharing your work.
• Cost: $47.71

10. Digital Illustration Online Short Course

This is among the pricier courses in our list as it is a course by the University of the Arts London. However, if illustration is something you would like to move forward with seriously to build your career path, having a university certification will boost your marketability in the industry.

This is a six-week course that covers digital illustration techniques from digital painting to animation. On top of that, an industry expert will work together with you as you explore this design field. There will also be assignments to complete, which is great as you’ll apply what you have learned into practice.

• Good for: Beginner designers.
• Duration: 6 weeks.
• What does it cover: Various techniques in digital illustration, how to apply your learning into different contexts such as vector and isometric illustration, illustrating for the screen, hand-drawing and effects, as well as basic animation.
• Cost: £480 ($518.31).

Learn More About Illustration for Free

Alas, we’ve ended the list but we’re going to give you some additional resources to help you get your illustration knowledge on point. So, here you go:

• How to Insert Icons, Vector Illustrations, 3D Illustrations and Animations in Figma
• How to Customize 3D Illustrations in Blender: Change Colors and Angles

There’s always space to learn, regardless of how experienced you are. Especially with the ever-changing landscape of design, there will always be new techniques, styles and even job scopes that’ll surely pop up in the feature.

With that being said, once you’ve gotten the hang of illustration and start making your own assets, we encourage you to contribute your design assets to IconScout. We offer some of the highest payout rates in the industry, so we hope to check your work out soon!