The Ultimate Drawing Course - Beginner to Advanced vs Fundamentals of Music Theory

Eleven hours across twelve sections takes learners from basic line quality and geometric forms through value, one-, two- and three-point perspective, still life, textures, eyes, the human face, figure drawing and a bonus animation-character module. The logical progression and breadth are genuine strengths for a beginner. The limit is depth: no single topic receives enough coverage to produce confident, independent work on that topic — the course teaches a foundation across many areas, not mastery of any one.

Jaysen Batchelor is consistently described as clear, friendly and easy to follow — the most cited positive across every source category. His demonstrating style is conversational and encouraging; he slows down for difficult concepts and moves briskly through ones that are visually obvious. Reddit users in r/ArtFundamentals and r/learnart recommend him specifically for learners who found more technical instructors (like DrawABox's uncomfortable rigor) discouraging.

At the standard Udemy sale price of $10.99–$14.99, eleven hours of video, 50-plus projects, downloadable worksheets and lifetime access represent very strong value. The course comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Even at the non-sale listed price of ~$85, learners on Udemy's frequent sale cycles rarely pay more than $15.

Fifty-plus individual drawing projects throughout the course give learners constant practice opportunities — from basic line exercises to realistic eyes, geometric still lifes and face studies. The projects are well-paced and genuinely build on each other. The ceiling is the platform model: no instructor reviews learner work, and the Q&A section is the only feedback channel. The "advanced" in the title describes the course's final sections, not the level of mastery a learner exits with.

The fundamentals of line, form, value, perspective and proportion are the bedrock of all drawing disciplines — from illustration to concept art to portrait. Learners who complete the full course have a genuine foundation. The gap is specificity: this course teaches you to draw fundamentals, not to draw in any specific style or for any specific professional output. A learner who wants to draw anime, do architectural sketching or pursue portrait commissions will need subject-specific follow-up courses.

Six modules take you from pitches, scales and modes through intervals, clefs, rhythm and form into two full weeks of functional harmony and a harmonic-analysis final. Revised in 2022. Reviewers consistently praise the clarity and the bite-sized video chunks. Capped because the taught material is thin relative to the difficulty of the quizzes in the later weeks.

Five University of Edinburgh academics — Dr Thomas Butler, Dr John Kitchen MBE, Dr Zack Moir and colleagues — deliver genuinely academic, well-paced lectures. The teaching is the most consistently praised element across the corpus. The variety of voices keeps it fresh, though it makes the level of assumed knowledge uneven from week to week.

Free to audit in full; a certificate is ~$49 (or ~£35) and is included in a Coursera Plus subscription with financial aid available. For a six-module university-grade music-theory course with an open-access companion e-book, the free-audit route is hard to beat on price.

Assessment is quiz- and exam-based rather than creative-project-based — weekly graded quizzes plus a harmonic-analysis final. Good for testing recall and analysis, but there is no composition portfolio or peer-reviewed creative artefact. The exams are the most divisive element, with several learners flagging notation and clef demands that exceed the taught content.

The notation, harmony and analysis skills transfer directly to reading scores, arranging, songwriting and further academic study — Edinburgh positions it as a foundation for musicology, composition and performance. Limit is that it is Western-notation theory, not ear training, production or instrument technique, so it is one pillar of musicianship rather than all of it.