Beyond the Stick Figure Art School – Review

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.

We love taking our art supplies out to the deck on a sunny day, gathering around the table, and creating something fun together. That’s why we were excited for the opportunity to review Beyond the Stick Figure Complete Drawing Course PLUS 3 Bonus Courses from Beyond the Stick Figure Art School. Being under quarantine gave us the perfect time to explore new art ideas.

These classes are completely online. They were created and are taught by a trained art teacher from England, who has developed these courses to be complete classes that students can do independently. They are billed as classes that are targeted for ages 5 to 95 and will help you to create frame-worthy art.

It’s more than a generic ‘art’ class, though – the lessons are separated into a Complete Drawing Course, Complete Pen & Ink and Watercolor Course, Introduction to Acrylic Course, and Introduction to 3-D Design Course.

Intended to take an entire year, there are more than 60 drawing lessons alone! We thought that the variety in these classes sounded really interesting.

Unfortunately, these lessons from Beyond the Stick Figure Art School didn’t live up to the hype for us. I think part of this disparity is in the way the courses are marketed. While people from ages 5 to 95 certainly could do these, I think most wouldn’t choose to – at least the beginning lessons. Many of the lessons are very short – only two or three minutes – making them very doable on an average day; but the skill level is also very low. Many, many of the initial lessons are all about identifying a basic shape, finding it somewhere around the house, and then drawing it. As shape identification is typically a primary skill, happening later in preschool and then in kindergarten, I don’t consider this appropriate for high school students. When I taught first grade, this was a project I gave them every year – not for standard circles and squares but spheres and rectangular prisms! My Big Helper and My Little Man, while very patient people, were bored after the first lesson. As secondary students, this was far beneath their skill level.

If these initial lessons had artistic vocabulary and terminology worked in, they would have been a bit more appropriate. However, I have heard very few artistic terms in the narrative of the lessons, and I am disappointed by that. While we are not choosing to make art one of our electives this year, I do want my kids to know basic art terms, artists, etc., and I thought this would be a great way to introduce new ones to them. Instead, the creator kept calling them “Little Artists” in the same way that many teachers call their students ‘boys and girls,’ and while I’m sure she meant nothing by it, to my secondary kids sitting at the table, it felt as if she was talking down to them.

For the initial drawing lessons you’re supposed to buy Prismacolor markers – a professional set of markers with amazing colors that blend really well. I was happy to hit a sale for these, so it cost much less than it normally would have. Given the types of basic chart blending and color labeling that occurred during the lessons, if my kids were very young, I would stick with Crayola. The colors aren’t quite as vibrant but they certainly work for learning those lessons. As mine are older, they appreciate the fancier markers and will take good care of them. To the author’s credit, she reminds students frequently throughout the lesson to make sure that the cap to the marker snaps closed.

Eventually we moved on to the pen and ink course. These classes were slightly longer, and it felt as if the content was expected to be more difficult – yay! It was clear from the beginning that you were going to be drawing something in particular, but she didn’t tell you what that was until the end. That frustrated my kids, as they wanted more information. The dimensions for what they were supposed to be doing weren’t clear, either, so while we were supposed to be drawing on watercolor paper and cut it into squares as directed, the sizes of our pieces were all off, resulting in a lot of wasted paper. I don’t like wasting things, and so more specific directions up front would have been helpful.

Again, there was a lot of drawing of shapes, but they were more complicated and so somewhat more interesting. I didn’t see the need to print off the squiggles to practice those exact squiggles, though, and learning to turn specific squiggles into specific shapes felt very formulaic. That may be one way to encourage people to draw something a specific way, but as we personally prefer to apply our own creativity to recreate an object in our way, it was too structured (for a squiggle-shape) for us.

My kids liked the next drawing section much more, although the prior issues still applied. They tried to work out the spacing and to figure out what they were supposed to be drawing when they realized that we were supposed to print things for them to TRACE. Tracing, again, is a very primary skill, and its inclusion in these lessons make it very clear that this is not appropriate for secondary students. To me, that sends the message that the teacher’s way is correct and that the student couldn’t possibly do it as well. We paused the video so that the kids could freehand the tree they were supposed to be making, and they did great!

The pen and ink sessions turned out to have a watercolor element, and my kids really enjoyed that.

My Big Helper is looking forward to continuing her work on her tree and checking out the watercolor lessons – but we didn’t enjoy these lessons nearly as much as we expected to. They were too basic, and while everyone does have to start somewhere, I feel the biggest issue here is in the marketing. Had we known that these were made for primary students, we would have had very different expectations going into them than we did.

We didn’t get as far into the curriculum as we wanted to for several reasons. The first is that although we were able to get into the website when it first opened to it, we were locked out the next time we tried. Although I requested a new password and checked back nearly every day for a week, nothing happened. I never did get new log-in information, but one afternoon we were magically able to get in. Unfortunately, I missed a button that needed to be clicked on that first visit in – my fault! – and so for another week we couldn’t get past those first few lessons.

Which is the second reason we didn’t get very far. My kids have completed basic drawing lessons in the past, so we were all very excited to try out the watercolor lessons the best. As My Big Helper recently received new watercolors, the timing was perfect. Unfortunately, these lessons don’t work that way; you can’t hop around and take the ones you want. Instead, you have to watch each one in order, starting from the very first material-gathering lesson – and that includes the classes. You can’t watch the watercolor course until you watch all of the drawing courses.

I have seen online courses that required you to check the lessons off in order, and that’s logical; however, I would have been much happier with these courses if you could choose to start with whichever course you wanted. They seemed basic enough – at least for my bigger kids – that they had no problems following along. There didn’t appear to be a cumulative effect, although maybe that was the intention, so I think most kids could definitely start with any course.

Other picky techy things? The videos change shape – sometimes landscape, sometimes portrait, where we couldn’t see the whole thing on the screen – and never is there an option to make them full screen. For an art class, where we’d expect to see detail, the option to maximize the video size for best visibility – and for keeping the computer far away from messy art supplies – would be great.

The best part of these lessons from Beyond the Stick Figure Art School for our family was that the kids could work completely independently. They didn’t need me to explain things or reteach concepts. Except in a few cases, most of the materials were things that we already had at home, and so once we collected our materials we were good to go for a whole series of lessons.

Overall, the lessons we tried from Beyond the Stick Figure Art School were much too basic for my secondary kids to enjoy fully. I think the first drawing series is perfect for primary kiddos. The courses we received came bundled together, but the website shows options for individual courses and other options. These individual options have a more affordable price tag, and I would have been much more likely to purchase one of those when my kids were small – especially before making a large investment like this particular bundle. Personally, I really enjoy doing art with my kids, and it’s something I have taken classes to teach, so I’m happy to spend time with them in this area. If art isn’t your thing, however, something this basic and ready-to-go might be right up your alley.

Don’t take my word for it, though – definitely get more opinions. You’ll find lots of those at the Homeschool Review Crew’s blog hop. Head over there to read more reviews about Beyond the Stick Figure Art School.