This is an in-depth review of the Watts Atelier course platform for aspiring artists.
As you will notice from this review, the Watts Atelier is targeted at a particular niche in art and design but still manages to provide something for everyone in any art specialty.
The Watts Atelier is way cheaper than a standard art school or other physical learning institution. That said, you will need to find out if the program will cater to your art specialty effectively.
With that in mind, let’s move into the review proper. I will be discussing the following:
- Overview of Watts Atelier
- What is inside Watts Atelier
- Pros of Watts Atelier
- Cons of Watts Atelier
- Is Watts Atelier worth it?
- Watts Atelier Pricing
Overview of Watts Atelier
Watts Atelier is a school for art and design. It was founded long ago by Jeffery R. Watts, and the Atelier, in the name, simply means an artist’s workshop or studio. The school is a large community of art instructors and students, the latter from all over the world.
The Watts Atelier specializes in the Reilly method of drawing, which emphasizes basic lines and shapes before features, especially when the subjects involve anatomy. The school aims to follow the traditional pattern of drawing those famous painters from the past employed while refining it with modern technical know-how.
Today, Watts Atelier teaches art in a master-apprentice manner. The training equips students with a high skill level to execute drawing projects so that the drawing or painting looks true to life and connects with the viewer’s emotions.
The school specializes in drawing and painting and every related specialty, such as 3D modeling, photo bashing, digital painting, et cetera. Most training is through live classes, online streaming, and on-demand video courses. You must join the waitlist fast to join the live classes, as it only has limited slots.
In whatever form you access, the training school has lots of room for practice through challenges and assignments, which you submit to the grading team for vetting. Alternatively, you can pay to have an instructor personally vet your work.
What Is Inside Watts Atelier?
Watts Atelier contains a rich library of video courses, live class replays, demos, and additional resources such as downloadable PDFs.
The school teaches many core skills, such as using various drawing materials depending on the object you are drawing or painting. You will learn to set up your canvas well and choose the right ink or paint.
The curriculum progresses from basic skills to more advanced techniques. Much attention is given to eliminating wrong mindsets and replacing them with healthy ones. This is especially useful as art concepts can be difficult to master, and students usually fail repeatedly before getting things right.
Beginner modules train students to appreciate perspectives and composition to break down complex figures into their basic forms, such as lines, shapes, curves, et cetera.
More advanced modules discuss how to take the skills previously learned and put them into action to draw or paint full-scale figures of human models, animals, and everyday items in a manner that emulates ancient masters of art like Picasso and Leonardo Da Vinci.
There are also several lessons dedicated to comic designers and illustrators. These lessons delve into the basic and advanced parts of forming mental images of dragons and weird avatars and drawing them to look as real as possible.
One challenging aspect of drawing that Watts Atelier helps its students master is not letting the tool control the artist; rather, the artist should control it. It is all about clearly expressing the obvious and subtle details in the specimen—live or imagined—and then applying pen and ink in restrained delicate strokes.
Courses Offered
The Watts Atelier training school’s online course library has dozens of courses covering practically every aspect of art. They include but are not limited to
- Oil painting fundamentals
- Structural figure drawing
- Figure painting Phase IV
- Bridgman Anatomy Phase I: Torso Front and Back
- Figure Drawing Fundamentals
- Inking Phase III
- Inking Phase II
- Inking Phase I
- Head Drawing Fundamentals
- Quick sketch Fundamentals
- And more
I found the courses to be highly professional in style. They also do not overload the student with details. The videos are sharp, and the voice is clean, although I did miss the subtitle feature even though I was watching some of the courses in English.
Course Instructors
Jeffrey Watts is the main course instructor and founder of Watts Atelier.
Jeffery Watts learned art at the California Art Institute and, in 1991, became an illustrator in the Movie Industry. Aside from being the founder of Watts Atelier, Jeffery’s work has featured in dozens of art ranking bodies such as museums and a mix of national and international art societies.
About seven other reputable instructors teach alongside Jeffrey Watt at the Watts Atelier Academy. They include Robert Watts and Meadow Gist, among others.
All of the other instructors studied art at the Watts Atelier Academy. Big mobile gaming and video industry players like Sony, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings have also utilized their creations.
All that attests to the quality of training Watts Atelier gives to their instructors as well as the competency of the instructors at passing on their skills.
Learning Methods
Students of Watts Atelier learn in one of three ways: online, in person, or via streaming of live courses.
These instruction methods use demonstrations, 3D models, reference images, et cetera for a complete learning experience.
Students who attend live classes in the Watts Atelier school also benefit from instructor reviews and critiques of their work. However, you can pay for personalized coaching even if you study online.
Community
Communities are now a necessity for an online study platform, and it’s good to see that Watts Atelier has one.
Watts Atelier has a common community for everyone who has a paid subscription on the platform, no matter your learning method—in-person classes, online, or streaming.
I had a chance to see what the community looks like via a free trial, and in my opinion, it’s great. The interface is well organized. A general forum lets you catch up on updates, comment on your projects or lessons, and respond to others’ posts.
And then, you get a dedicated space from where you can manage your account, log all your progress and activity, and keep track of important notifications.
There’s also a convenience feature in the form of a universal search button to get to a post with a zippy pace.
Pros of Watts Atelier
Gives You A Structured Format
Some of what Watts Atelier teaches are on YouTube for free. And with that, I don’t mean Watts Atelier YouTube channel.
However, it can be hard to verify the accuracy of whatever you learn for free or to crosscheck the instructor for competency.
Watts Atelier does not only have capable hands, but they also offer a coherent structure. That gives peace of mind and is useful if you are not the type that can find your way around a maze of different concepts.
Watts Atelier is Great for Learning Traditional Photography
Watts Atelier can also train traditional artists and digital art creators, but traditional styles are their forte.
In fact, traditional art is the whole idea that Watts Atelier is built around. Digital art is a fairly recent inclusion.
All that means is you are better off learning things like drawing with charcoal pencils or painting on a canvas with Watts Atelier. It is great for learning portraiture, landscape painting, drawing, and other aspects of art that go back to ancient eras.
Provides A Thorough Roadmap
Watts Atelier handles dozens of art specialties, and while it can be hard finding your interest when you eventually do, you get a format for gaining mastery of that specialty.
You will notice that the foundation and technique schools work well together, which means that the knowledge acquired in one ensures a smooth transition to the other.
That is the case with the figure drawing and portraiture courses. When you take one course, much of it involves repetition of the skills you acquired in the other.
Good Video Quality
All videos are shot in HD format at 1080p, and you can adjust the viewing quality for your connection quality.
Although there are no subtitles, the voice is also clear, even though English is the only language.
Good Community Forums
While there’s nothing special about the community, having a community is a big plus for any platform, online or in-person.
The Watts Atelier community is fairly active and is where the exciting stuff is announced, such as upcoming challenges and new features.
Cons of Watts Atelier
Unnecessary Talk in Jeffery Watts Courses
Most of the Watts Atelier Academy courses pack serious training, but the ones where Jeffery Watts is the instructor are a bit different.
Jeff talks about unrelated subjects a lot in his tutorials. They are interesting but are not the kind of banter you would expect in a tutorial.
He usually just draws and rambles about nature, personal life, etc.
You will experience what I’m talking about in courses like Landscape phase one and the basics of drawing. He might be drawing or painting something while talking about different unrelated matters.
It can almost begin to seem like he’s out of touch with the needs of an absolute beginner. It is a common thing that can happen when you have so much advanced knowledge about a subject that you forget what it is like to be a beginner in that subject.
The extra-long talk won’t be much of an issue if you are more of a visual learner, but even at that, the stories can be a distraction.
Online Students Miss Out On Live Atelier
If you don’t spend money to sign up for Watts Atelier in-person training, you miss a lot of what the Academy has to offer
One important feature that an online course neglects is the opportunity to have one of the instructors review or critique your work.
Can Be Overwhelming
Watts Atelier has so many online courses it can be hard to know where to start. And the fact that they all seem very appealing doesn’t help matters.
In cases like this, a dedicated instructor would kick in and start you on the right path, showing you which course to begin with based on an in-depth analysis of your skills.
However, you don’t get that option until you pay for it, and all you can do is determine for yourself where your true interests lie, or else, you’d be hopping back and forth between different courses to find your perfect fit.
Grading/Feedback Turnover Time Can Be Annoying
Assignments form an integral part of the training, but Watts Atelier has much work to do on that front.
The problem lies in the delay you endure before an assignment is graded. It can take weeks or even months to receive grading and feedback for your assignments.
They (Watts Atelier) try to reduce the workload of attending to so many assignments from students by limiting you to one assignment per class. But even that one can take a long time to get graded.
By the time you submit assignments for each class, you might end up plowing through each video without any feedback on your skill level because the projects you submitted haven’t gotten attention yet.
The alternative is to continue watching the videos at your own pace and practice without submissions, but you paid for grading, too, right? It can feel like you aren’t getting everything you paid for.
Can Become More Expensive As You Progress
That’s another flaw I see in the Watts Atelier Academy. You will need to pay more as you advance to the more specialty courses.
A drawing series course, for instance, has tutorials on head drawing, but you might not proceed to facial expressions—a very niche aspect—if you don’t pay more money than your subscription requires.
Are Watts Atelier Courses Worth It?
Watts Atelier courses might be all you need if you fancy becoming a traditional painter and artist. If you like getting your hands dirty with ink, Watts is arguably your best bet.
You can even learn a lot of digital art techniques with the platform. Either way, the quality of the instructors isn’t something to scoff at.
At the same time, not everyone has the skills and motivation to draft a study plan. If you want a step-by-step learning process and don’t mind having a personal coach vet your work, Watts Atelier will grant you that.
So yes, Watts Atelier is worth it. You don’t need to worry about being a beginner, as the school has plenty of resources to help newbies build an art career from the ground up.
You might have to put up with some unnecessary chit-chat here and there, especially from Jeffery’s courses but apart from that, there’s really nothing much to bear.
How Much Does Watts Atelier Cost?
Watts Atelier has different pricing structures depending on what you need from the course.
The lowest subscription tier is the individual masterclass. As the name suggests, it has a curriculum that contains only the course you need based on an assessment of your interests.
The individual masterclass goes for $49, billed monthly.
The next plan is the Drawing Core Fundamentals which covers charcoal and graphite drawing. It costs $99 per month.
Up next is Painting Access, which goes for $119 monthly and is the segment of the course for gouache and oil painting.
The Full Access tier grants access to everything in the Drawing Fundamentals and Painting access for $199 monthly.
To unlock the luxury of a dedicated Watts instructor, you must pay $499 for Instructor Mentoring, essentially the Full Access tier, with an extra $300 for a private coach.
Every plan allows you to submit your assignments to the grading team for critiques and reviews.
Leave a Reply