Hop on with us on a visual arts journey with the help of our Best Visual Arts Courses. Improve your skills and creativity across diverse art forms.

Key Takeaways

Access to top-rated painting, drawing, and sculpture courses from prestigious institutions.
A chance to develop technical skills and deepen your artistic understanding.
Certificates of completion to enhance your portfolio.

What do online visual arts courses offer?

These courses offer comprehensive training in different art forms. You get a chance to learn from experts worldwide and improve your technical skills.

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Courses in this Guide

Click any course to jump directly to its detailed review

1 The Architectural Imagination → 2 Roman Architecture → 3 A Global History of Architecture → 4 The Art of Structural Engineering: Vaults → 5 Modern Sculpture: An Introduction to Art History → 6 History of Chinese Architecture: Part 1 → 7 Seeing Through Photographs → 8 Contemporary Architecture → 9 Fashion and design → 10 How to Make a Comic Book (Project-Centered Course) →

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Visual arts Courses Evaluation & Selection Criteria

We carefully curated our list of top visual arts courses based on academic rigor along with the diversity of artistic disciplines offered. Our team evaluated each course for its faculty qualifications, student reviews, and institutional reputation. This ensured a comprehensive learning journey for our students.

List of best Visual Arts courses:

The Architectural Imagination

- - Harvard University via edX
  - 50 hours of effort required
  - 375,875+ already enrolled!
  - ★★★★★

the architechtural imagination

The best course for you to learn the fundamentals of principles of architecture at your ease and pace. Whether you want to learn from the course as an academic subject or to develop a professional career. This course will help you understand some of history’s most important buildings. You will learn to read, analyze, and understand all the different forms of architectural representation easily. Similarly, you will understand the social and historical contexts behind major works of architecture. Moreover, you will also learn basic principles to produce your own architectural drawings and models, and more.

Roman Architecture

- - Yale University via Coursera
  - 42 hours of effort required
  - 30,792+ already enrolled!
  - ★★★★★ (264 Reviews)

Roman Architecture

In this Roman architecture course, you will discover the power of architecture to shape not only politics but your society and culture as well. The course starts with a powerful introduction to Roman architecture. Then, you will learn about the evolution of Roman architecture from the Iron Age through the late republic. Similarly, you get to know about the lifestyles of rich and famous. Moreover, you’ll also know about the city of Herculaneum’s inhabitants and how they tried to escape Vesuvius. This and much more about Roman architecture will be discussed here.

A Global History of Architecture

- - Massachusetts Institute of Technology via edX
  - 108 hours of effort required
  - Skill Level: Introductory
  - Course Type: Instructor-led

A global History of architecture

In this course, you will learn about humanity’s rich architectural history around the globe. From 100,000 BCE to ca. 1,600 CE, you will learn most of the important events that happened. Similarly, you will understand the history and context of the important building that helped to shape our culture. Moreover, you will study the impacts of different cultural and religious traditions on architecture too. Other topics like the history of climate, geographical changes and more will be discussed too. You might also be interested in best Anime Art courses at our platform.

The Art of Structural Engineering: Vaults

- - Princeton University via edX
  - 18 hours of effort required
  - Skill Level: Introductory
  - Course Type: Instructor-led

The art of structural engineering

Want to discover all about the design of classic and contemporary vaults? Take this engaging and challenging course now and see for yourself. You will learn to solve the efficiency of structures using appropriate formulas. Next, you will understand how you can evaluate a structure within the measures of structural art. Moreover, you will get to know how economic, cultural, and social influences the structural design. Similarly, how to analyze the vaulted forms like domes, hypars, cantilevers, and arches will also be learned.

Modern Sculpture: An Introduction to Art History

- - University of York via FutureLearn
  - 16 hours of effort required
  - Skill Level: Introductory

Modern Sculpture

Your visual skills can now be easily improved with the help of this online course. As you start the journey of designing and learning from public sculpture artworks, you will become an expert in this field. You will understand sculpture in the built environment. With that, you will also learn about modern sculpture which includes ideas, histories, and theories. Next, you will understand the role that sculpture plays in shaping our suburban and urban landscapes. Similarly, you will be engaged critically with some materialistic, conceptual, and theoretical concepts related to sculptural practice. Thus, this and much more will be learned about modern sculpture from this course. Enhance your artistic skills with our Free + Best 3D Art Courses and Classes 2024.

History of Chinese Architecture: Part 1

- - Tsinghua University via edX
  - 32 hours of effort required

chinese History

A very interesting course that explores China’s rich and varied architectural history thoroughly. The lecture videos of the course are in Mandarin but with English subtitles. It is so that those who can’t understand Mandarin can also learn through English subtitles. The course is going to cover the construction and aesthetics of China’s imperial palaces. It also includes places like religious structures, tombs, pagodas, and gardens. With that, you are going to study the basics of Chinese architecture, brick and stone construction of many Buddhist places, and more.

Seeing Through Photographs

- - The Museum of Modern Art via Coursera
  - 15 hours of effort required
  - 348,045+ already enrolled!
  - ★★★★★ (3,137 Reviews)

Seeing Through Photographs

Though taking and sharing photographs has become quite a common hobby for most of us. And yet, we are not aware of the true understanding of these photographs. This course aims to help us understand the gaps between seeing and then truly understanding the photographs. By introducing a diversity of ideas, different technologies, and approaches that inform their making, you can understand photography like never before. Similarly, you will look closely at the photographs from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Moreover, you will develop skills to become capable of understanding the difference between photographs and photographic images. Next, you will learn about different modes of artistic and technological experimentation in photography and more. Follow here for Anatomy Art Courses.

Contemporary Architecture

- - Build Academy via Independent
  - Course Length: 12 Weeks
  - Course Type: Self-paced

Contemporary Architecture

A course that will enable you to analyze major contemporary architectural ideas in the context of both globalization and specific local contexts. With that, the course will analyze ideologies and projects in this context as well. You will first understand what globalization and critical regionalism are. Then you will learn about tectonic, technology, and structure of Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, and more. Furthermore, the course will introduce you to the contemporary architecture scene. There you will be acquiring the essential skills to look, analyze, and understand them.

Fashion and design

- - The Museum of Modern Art via Coursera
  - 18 hours of effort required
  - 188,164+ already enrolled!
  - ★★★★★ (1,343 Ratings)

Fashion as Design

Do you have this wish of understanding fashion and design from every aspect? If yes, then you have landed on the right course. With the help of this course, you will develop critical tools to contextualize fashion design. From daily basis clothing to couture garments, you will understand the ins and outs of fashion from different perspectives. Topics like tracing the history, impact of garments over time, its development and exploration, and many more will be discussed. Moreover, you will also understand the lifecycle of clothing. All the steps from its design and production to marketing, distribution, and consumption. You will learn everything in detail.

How to Make a Comic Book (Project-Centered Course):

- - High Tech High via Coursera
  - 28 hours of effort required
  - 32,139+ already enrolled!
  - ★★★★★ (158 Ratings)

Hoe to Make a comic book

A project-centered course where you will learn skills to create an original four-page minicomic designed short story. You’ll get all the guidelines you need to get started and all those who are interested in learning to make a comic book are welcome to join the course. You’ll start by focusing on the idea creation for your comic story. Then you will learn about how to script your comic so that it is ready for publication. Similarly, you will be constructing thumbnails to plot out the look of your final comic book. Next, you will produce the actual pages of arts for your comic book with the help of penciling and lettering. In this way, you will make your own comic book from start to end.

After reading the description of all these 10 visual arts courses, you can easily decide what you need from this list. So make up your mind and start looking for the right course for yourself by reading the description of each of these 10 best visual arts courses & MOOCs 2020-21 and never stop learning.

10 Best Visual Arts Courses & MOOCs 2025 [Updated]