The Art & Science of Drawing vs UI / UX Design Specialization
Same Bayesian formula, same rubric — so the difference in scores reflects the difference in the courses, not the difference in how we evaluated them.
Skillshare · Design
The Art & Science of Drawing
California Institute of the Arts (Coursera) · Design
UI / UX Design Specialization
Per-criterion
A genuinely systematic fundamentals curriculum — mark-making, measuring, proportion, 3D form, contour, and light-and-shadow — taught one skill at a time with clear demonstrations. Reviewers repeatedly call it the clearest beginner drawing instruction they have found. Capped only because it is deliberately foundational: no advanced rendering or stylistic range.
Eviston is the standout. Across our sample he is described as thorough, clear and easy to follow, and a Hacker News user recommended his series "without reservation". Twenty-plus years of studio and academy teaching show in the structured, one-skill-per-lesson pacing.
Included in the Skillshare subscription (~$14/month). The full multi-class Art & Science of Drawing path — basic skills through shading — sits inside one subscription, so a learner who works the sequence over a month or two gets an entire foundations program for the price of one month of access.
Every lesson ends with a concrete practice project, and the Skillshare projects tab carries thousands of student submissions. Learners report visible week-one improvement. Capped because the projects are skill-building drills, not a portfolio-grade body of finished work, and peer feedback is light.
The fundamentals — observation, proportion, constructing 3D form, controlling value — transfer directly to illustration, design and any subsequent drawing study. Reviewers note the skills make it easier to pick up later, more specialised classes. Limit is scope: it teaches the foundation, not a finished professional specialism.
Visual-design-first curriculum with strong typography, colour and hierarchy coverage. Reviewers consistently flag it as a beginner survey — light on modern UX research, no front-end code, and several call the visual aesthetic dated.
Michael Worthington and Roman Jaster deliver calm, well-paced art-school lectures praised across our sample. The structural catch is that there is no instructor feedback on your work — every assignment is graded by other beginners.
At ~$49/month with a stated 2-month path (most finish in 3-4), all-in cost lands around $100-200 — one of the cheapest paid UX paths and dramatically below mentored bootcamps like Designlab or CareerFoundry.
Two end-to-end portfolio artefacts (a mobile interface and a responsive web project) are real and shareable. The ceiling is capped by peer-only grading and brief plagiarism complaints — reviewers report projects stolen and graded by people who don't know the field.
Gives you the vocabulary and the visual instincts of an art-school designer. Real-world job translation is the weakest area — a 2019 Hacker News post documents a graduate building a CalArts portfolio for two years and still being rejected as 'too junior'.
Scoring methodology applies identically to every course on the site — see the formula.