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204 Best + Free Digital Painting Courses & Certificates [2026]
Ranked by Michael Kuhlman, CourseDuck's founder, from student reviews across every provider. How we rank
Our top picks
- Drawing and Painting on the iPad with Procreate [Udemy]
- The Ultimate Digital Painting Course - Beginner to Advanced [Udemy]
- Art Fundamentals - Building Blocks of Digital Painting [Udemy]
- The Digital Painting MEGA Course: Beginner to Advanced [Udemy]
- Digital painting with Krita 5.0 for beginners [Udemy]
- Digitally Painting Light and Color: Amateur to Master [Udemy]
- Photorealistic Digital Painting From Beginner To Advanced. [Udemy]
- Concept Art Masterclass - Landscapes and Environments [Udemy]
- The Ultimate Guide to Digitally Painting Everything [Udemy]
- Digital Painting Master Class : Beginner to Advanced [Udemy]
About the best Digital Painting courses
CourseDuck compares the 204 Digital Painting courses listed here, 8 of them free, and ranks them from the 183,000 ratings and reviews their students have left, with the price, length and level of each one side by side. No course pays to be listed or ranked. As featured on Harvard EDU, Stackify and Inc. How we rank
Frequently asked questions
- Udemy and Eduonix are best for practical, low cost and high quality Digital Painting courses.
- Coursera, Udacity and EdX are the best providers for a Digital Painting certificate, as many come from top Ivy League Universities.
- YouTube is best for free Digital Painting crash courses.
- PluralSight, SkillShare and LinkedIn are the best monthly subscription platforms if you want to take multiple Digital Painting courses.
- Independent Providers for Digital Painting courses & certificates are generally hit or miss.
It is most widely used in conceptual design for film, television and video games. Digital painting software such as Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, ArtRage, GIMP, Krita and openCanvas give artists a similar environment to a physical painter: a canvas, painting tools, mixing palettes, and a multitude of color options.
- Average
- $54,462 a year
- Middle half earn
- $32,500 to $66,500 25th to 75th percentile
- Full range
- $19,500 to $118,500
Share of US job postings in each pay band; the dark bar holds the average, the striped bars the 25th and 75th percentiles. Source: ZipRecruiter salary data, gathered when this guide was first published in October 2026.
Yes and No. Certified Digital Painting developers on average make more money. Having a Digital Painting certificate greatly increases the chance of landing an interview and can open otherwise closed doors. Coursera, Udacity and EdX offer excellent certificate options for impressing your future employers. Eduonix, Udemy and several other providers offer certificates, but they aren't as reputable. If you have a Computer Science Degree, certificates are not as important. Still, many employers won't care about certificates, but rather your interview skills, experience and/or skills assessment.
204 Filtered Courses
1
Drawing and Painting on the iPad with Procreate (2021)
4.7
A 5-hour, hands-on Procreate walkthrough from illustrator Brad Colbow that gets iPad owners comfortable with the app fast, though it hasn't been updated since 2021.
Best for: iPad owners who want to learn Procreate's tools by making a comic strip and a painting rather than sitting through a feature list.
Pros
Cons
-
- Easy to follow; reviewers with zero Procreate experience say they felt comfortable by the end
- Learn by making things: a full comic strip section and a final painting, not just a tool tour
- Colbow's delivery and pleasant voice get repeated praise in the reviews
- Short at about 5 hours, with captions in 15 languages
-
- Last updated December 2021, so Procreate features added since then are missing
- A couple of students found sections hard to connect and the teaching not systematic enough
- Little guidance on picking canvas sizes for print versus web
2
The Ultimate Digital Painting Course - Beginner to Advanced (2022)
4.6
A 27 hour, fundamentals first path from the brush tool to photorealistic painting and character design, with an early drawn eye that keeps beginners moving before the theory lands.
Best for: Complete beginners with a tablet and Photoshop who want drawing theory and digital painting taught in one place.
Pros
Cons
-
- Opens with drawing an eye, so beginners get a real result early on before the theory starts
- Fundamentals sections on perspective, light and color, and color theory come before full paintings
- Students say the two instructors explain key concepts clearly at a pace that is neither too hard nor too easy
- 27 hours across 18 sections reach people, environments, character design and a photorealistic style
-
- Exercise files are Photoshop documents, so a reviewer on another app says most assignments are off limits
- Some later sections are painting time lapses with little explanation, according to lower-star reviews
- Unnamed layers and unfixed resource files frustrate followers, and the last update was March 2022
3
Art Fundamentals - Building Blocks of Digital Painting (2024)
4.6
A free, one-hour primer on value, form and color from concept artist Hardy Fowler, ending with a small Photoshop exercise, and taken by over 121,000 students so far.
Best for: Total newcomers who need the vocabulary of art explained before committing to a long paid painting course.
Pros
Cons
-
- Free and only 67 minutes, so it costs nothing but an hour to find out if digital painting is for you.
- Reviewers call Fowler clear, relaxed and motivational, and say the value and color theory holds up.
- Ends with a short project, a shaded apple, that surprised at least one student with how good it looked.
- Refreshed in October 2024 after a 2017 launch, and still drawing four and five star reviews in 2026.
-
- Photoshop steps go by fast; brush, opacity and flow changes often happen without being explained.
- Mostly theory. One beginner wanted more actual painting, and another said the content is not enough on its own.
- Recorded on an older Photoshop, so at least one shortcut reviewers mention no longer works.
4
The Digital Painting MEGA Course: Beginner to Advanced (2022)
4.5
Seven style-by-style painting projects, from cel shading to photorealism, taught by a working concept artist who does most of it in Procreate on an iPad.
Best for: Hobbyists who already know their painting app's basics and want to try seven distinct styles with a finished project for each.
Pros
Cons
-
- Seven finished projects, one per style, so progress is visible by the end
- Clear, easy to follow steps; one student reports a finished piece within the first hour
- Watching a working concept artist pick colors and build up a painting is a highlight in the longer reviews
- Useful Procreate tips throughout, including how to build custom brushes
-
- Some lectures have audio out of sync or missing video chunks, worst in the later sections
- Painted on an iPad with no visible cursor, so it can be hard to tell where he is drawing
- Last updated in 2022; brush lessons lag the current Procreate, and explanation is thin in places
5
Digital painting with Krita 5.0 for beginners (2022)
4.6
The only Krita-specific pick on our digital painting list: a 7.5-hour walk through the free Photoshop alternative, from tablet setup to a finished non-destructive illustration.
Best for: Complete beginners who chose Krita because it's free and want every tool explained before they start painting.
Pros
Cons
-
- Tools are introduced in a logical order, each one explained before it is used in a small project.
- Starts with graphics theory (raster vs vector, color models, bit depth) before any brush is picked up.
- Subtitles and a text transcript help if the narration is hard to follow.
- Ends with a non-destructive illustration workflow using group layers, alpha inheritance and blending modes.
-
- Narration has a heavy accent and a filtered, almost synthetic sound; some reviewers found it hard to understand.
- Last updated December 2022 for Krita 5.0, so newer versions may differ in places.
- Some sections go deeper into features than a painter will ever need, according to one reviewer.
6
Digitally Painting Light and Color: Amateur to Master (2019)
4.7
Learn the fundamentals of light and color and take your art to the next level.
What You'll Learn
- learn how to paint realistic lighting and color schemes.
- learn how to paint various lighting conditions.
- learn how to understand and interpret real life lighting situations
7
Photorealistic Digital Painting From Beginner To Advanced. (2019)
4.6
Bring your imagination to life!
What You'll Learn
- Students will be able to paint photorealistic digital images.
8
Concept Art Masterclass - Landscapes and Environments (2025)
4.6
Create Concept Art and Digital Paintings for Film, Animation or Games
What You'll Learn
- In this course, you will learn how to create concept art
- You'll learn to paint backgrounds for films, animation or games
- You'll learn about key principles of composition
- You'll also learn how to use tailored brush packs in Photoshop
- You'll learn creative painting techniques to make your art look powerful
- You'll learn how to do visual research and build up a reference library of images
- You'll create a fully finished, beautiful portfolio piece
9
The Ultimate Guide to Digitally Painting Everything (2019)
4.6
A beginners guide to painting anything you can think of
What You'll Learn
- Be able to paint dozens of different materials and textures
- Be able to paint various lighting situations
- Be able to paint various subjects
- Be able to solve problems when painting things in the future
10
Digital Painting Master Class : Beginner to Advanced (2020)
4.5
Digital painting and drawing has never been this fun. Illustrate characters, creatures, landscapes and more!
What You'll Learn
- Gain a firm understanding of the diverse tools and powerful features available in Photoshop and Illustrator
- Have a better understanding on how to use textures and shading for more realistic details
- You will learn many techniques in Photoshop that will make your editing faster and more realistic like the puppet warp tool
- Learn best practices to better develop and digitally paint character ideas quickly
- Mastery of the Photoshop interface
- Fundamentals of lighting, textures, and shapes
- Frame by frame animation techniques
- Character and creature deisgn
- Full understanding of drawing with perspective
- Advance environment illustration and so much more!!!
11
The Digital Painting w/ Procreate Guide | Grayscale method (2020)
4.6
We'll complete a digital painting in this step-by-step, easy to follow course with tons of tips, tricks, & shortcuts!
What You'll Learn
- You'll learn that Procreate's tools are more powerful than most realize!
- You'll learn tons of tips, little-known tricks, and shortcuts for this amazing iPad app.
- You'll learn creative ways to use selections, layer masks, filters, adjustments, and a lot more!
- You'll learn art techniques you'll be able to immediately apply to your own work!
- You'll learn how to properly paint colors over a black and white value painting or greyscale painting.