Beyond the Stick Figure Art School (online) -- my 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.

Online courses are very helpful, especially if you live in a rural area, have limited transportation, would like the option of many many courses, and multiple other reasons. We had the opportunity to try out an online art program called Beyond the Stick Figure Art School  which on its website is promoted as an art program which can be used by an entire family (ages 5-95). My 15 year old daughter worked with this course, which I will tell you about! :)



The Beyond the Stick Figure Art School is an online purchase, meaning that when you purchase it, it is available for use by your family for all time. The topics covered include drawing courses (three different levels) as well as pen and ink drawing lessons, watercolor lessons, acrylic lessons, and 3-D design lessons.
The lessons are in a video format, with the lesson on a video and worksheets for the student

to download and utilize. The student listens and follows along with the instructor. The course is intended to be very independent (does not need a lot of direct parent support) for the student to complete. The lessons are in a row, meaning that the student must complete the first lesson in order to go on to the next lesson. The teacher is very clear about what supplies are needed and which types in particular she would like the students to purchase and use. 
The lessons begin with very basic things like drawing lines, curves, circles, and more. They progress into different manifestations of these lines, with students practicing these multiple times. 

Students also color in shapes/patterns with markers, along with the teacher and then finish by themselves. 

The seemingly random shapes that the students practice drawing and coloring will come together to form a completed picture, sort of like if you were to take a picture and draw a grid over it and then draw a blank grid and then copy it section by section. 
After the drawing section, there are courses on pen and ink drawings--learning techniques and then tracing a picture, transferring it onto art paper, then drawing on it using the traced lines and enhancing it with watercolor. The watercolor lessons go beyond the watercolor used in the pen and ink and allow the student to learn to use watercolor more thoroughly.
There are also sections in acrylic painting and 3D art, but we did not get to those. The lessons have a rubric which allows the student to self-reflect and gauge their participation and progress (which is a neat thing).

So...my thoughts. I did not care for this art course, nor did my daughter. It was very basic and quite tedious. For a 15-year old to spend lesson after lesson drawing curves or tracing shapes and then coloring in with markers was not what we were looking for in an art course. The videos are very clear, but very slow and the videos are made in a way that you cannot increase the speed to watch at an accelerated pace...and the sound quality was very quiet (we tried on different devices and could not get the sound loud enough -- though if you are using it with headphones it is fine.) A student may not skip ahead, even to see what is coming next, unless they click the "mark as complete" button -- which for sticklers like me is an issue (marking something as complete when I haven't actually completed it-- yup, I'm weird that way!), so this made it difficult to even try out some of the later sections of the course ((to clarify -- we DID use this skip method, even though it felt wrong to me haha)) so we were able to go beyond where my daughter balked at drawing yet another abstract shape and coloring it again and again and again to see what was further on in the course. 
Perhaps a younger student would like this more. It is definitely easy to use, the expectations within each lesson are very clear, and there are a lot of lessons! The self-reflection rubric is also a really neat tool to incorporate into the curriculum at different places.  However, I really cannot in clear conscience recommend this course. 
There are many people who DID like this course, and to be fair, you really should check out their reviews! I am quick to tell you that I am often not on the same "wavelength" as other homeschoolers...and you may like to read these reviews in addition to mine. Please click on the graphic below to read more reviews on this Beyond the Stick Figure Art School!