Art to Life (A2L) Creative Visionary Program is one of the best online art teaching programs in the world outside the academic world. CVP (as it's usually called) is sworn-on by both professional and hobby artists who had a change of career or lifted their art game as a result of taking this course. CVP is often mentioned in art circles as the before-and-after game changer. Although
there is a strong bias towards abstraction and acrylic painting, it helps both figurative and abstract artists.
THE TEAM
Nicholas
Wilton, the founder of Art to Life and the program mastermind, is a former reputed senior illustrator (with internationally renowned
books covers and projects) but also a
tenured abstract painter.
Wilton
is the founder, creator, mastermind and main teacher. However, he's
surrounded and helped by an amazing team of coaches and teachers (Anne Artz, Caroline Millar, Stacey Phillips, Insa Hoffmann, Kate Rhodes, Marji Thompson, Noah Woods, Amy Livezey),
ambassadors, customer service and tech support people (many of them former program
students) so that the student experience is enjoyable but also helpful.
There are also some professional artists guests during the live calls as well as recorded interviews with some others. Guest speakers this year were Joh Ritt, Rob Szot and Adam Rosendhal among others). We cannot forget the amazing customer support and operations team lead by Brandon and Moirah.
OVERVIEW
The program is held only once a year and is preceded by a generous free week-long workshop and several painting promotional calls. Unlike many other courses where you learn to follow instructions to achieve your instructor/s' style, CVP focuses on teaching you the principles that make any painting or visual artwork successful; also many things that aren't taught in Art School but are the professional artist' daily bread. Of course, you also get tips and suggestions on how to develop your visual language, endless encouragement, demonstrations on how to adjust and improve a painting, replies to your queries and tons of practical information, practice exercises and prompts.
The program goes for 12 weeks, with a rest week, so 11 weeks. The core of the teachings or CVP principles are Risk, Soul, Value, Colour, Design and Texture. There
is also an Intro Module explaining how the platform works, presentation
of teachers, coaches, ambassadors and guest speakers as well. Module 1 (Risk & Soul) has Week 1 Discover, Week 2 Desire, and Week 3 Play. Module 2 (Design & Value) has Week 4 Value and Week 5 Design. Module 3 (Colour Value) has Week 6 Colour Value and Week 7 Colour Aspects. Module 4 (Texture) has just Week 8 Texture. Module 5 (Your Series) and has Week 5 Process, Week 6 Momentum, Week 7 Balance and Week 8 Launch. There is also an end of the course call and two extra bonus calls devoted to art business a few weeks after finishing the course with tips about developing your art business and selling you art. There is a section with bonus material for each week, a help and support hub, a video look-up tool, an Art Help section with bite size videos, art guides, image adjustments and what's not.
The lessons are hosted on the Kajabi platform, which is great. The community forum is hosted on the Circle platform (app available). Information is clear on how to access each portal and how each portal works.
I found the course amazing at times, boring and full of platitudes at others. However, it has congruency, you really learn and/or improve your art practice and art making, and you cannot leave CVP without looking at the world, Art and your art with new fresh eyes.
I
do not regret taking the
course, quite the contrary, but I think my expectations were as high as
the price
tag. One of the best things is that the community forum is hosted
outside Facebook, and it is all private and very dynamic. The creative
energy there is amazing. The same can be said of the live calls, all of
which I found terrific, inspiring and fun.
Things I Missed in CVP 2024 > Lack of cultural diversity in the coaches and guests.
>
That people from different levels were all mixed together,
professionals, active and retired, hobbyists, young emergent artists, career changers. This clearly
benefits newbies not so much professionals.
>
I
didn't expect calls or lessons to continue at the end of the program for
sure, but having at least one weekly interaction with
coaches, ambassadors or teachers would have been great and very encouraging as the course is accessible for a year. However, business matters most and these people would be helping those that joining the follow-up membership Academy or The Studio.
>
A week for module is just unreasonable unless you are a retiree. I'd suggest devoting two weeks to each module, with the same number of calls rearranged within those two weeks and distributed differently during that time. This is especially
important for people, like me, who had a demanding full-time job. >
Week 9 is full of recycled stuff, some videos repeating the
same information without much content added except for the live calls.
>
The coaching call on materials done on week 8 should have been the
first coaching call on Week 1 because it's a lesson on materials, paint
viscosity and transparency, how to extend colour, properties of
different mediums and mixed media materials. So, it makes no sense to me
waiting for 8 weeks to have something as necessary and basic at the end.
THE MATERIALS
The program has a long list of materials recommended for the course, listing both basic and optional. Yet, you don't need some of the basic ones listed in the list. Also, you don't need to paint on canvas or panels,
because good quality watercolour paper will do the job during most of
the course; you can have the panels for your final series. This only favours A2L shop, Wilton's shop, that offer packages with a CVP kit (for sale only in the USA). Some of the additional materials were never used in the classes or calls, so you don't really need them.
PRICE TAG
Price tag is high, but especially so if your currency has a bad exchange rate with the Australian dollar. They offer payment plans up to 6 months, with 12 months options offered on a case by case basis.
I really enjoyed the course and it really helped me, but the price tag is too much because many things they teach are taught
online by professional artists at a fraction of the price or for free on YouTube. The price is equivalent to an intercontinental month holiday with flights and hotels included. There are no scholarships or sliding price options, which is a shame.
TEACHING PLATFORM (KAJABI HOSTED)
The quality of the videos, both technically and teaching-wise, is stupendous. You can download the PDFs, audio and audio transcripts of all lessons and live calls.The quality of the group calls and coaching calls was from excellent to outstanding, always fun. The pop up calls were Q&As.
A2L improvements I'd like to see on the Course Platform.
>
Allow videos to be downloaded, because the audio+transcript is helpful to a limited extend for a Visual Arts course. Watermarks with logos or small photos would show clearly who's the author of the video, and I doubt that most people attending the course would want to give for free what they had to pay so dearly.
>
No bite-sized videos for texture week. Stacey Phillips' masterclass
had plenty of information to summarize in this section.
> Some of the videos were unnecessary long with things that could be demonstrated, taught and explained in half the time.> I'd like to be able to bookmark or favourite my fav calls or lessons so that I can revisit them and go straight to them quickly.
>
I'd rather have an A2L devoted to newbies and a Mastermind just for alumni or people who are intermediate or professional
painters instead of having all levels in one course.
>
I'd love that the lessons were released earlier on for the Southern Hemisphere, as the time differences favour the Northern Hemispherians.
>
I suggest structuring the two colour weeks in just one. I found two weeks too much as
there were things that were very single and didn't need of much
explanation and others were repeated over and over; or the explanations
were
unnecessarily long. Yet, the time devoted to composition was minimal and
quite basic.
> Devote more time to design. Because it was not done properly, many of the uploads on the sharing portal lacked any sort of composition quality.
> The bite-sized videos are grouped per week, but some of them are misplaced. Besides, these videos have no linked list/menu within a week. If this wasn't enough, some of these videos are badly organised within a week; so, things that
should be explained first to understand what follows, are placed after others that need of the former to be explained to proceed. An example: "What is harmony?" video in week 7
appears after harmonizing with glazing.
> I'd would rather have the bite-sized videos and the image adjustment videos together with the lessons, like within the corresponding lesson lateral menu.
COMMUNITY FORUM
I loved being able to share and socialize on Circle. I didn't installed the app, so I just used the browser version. Being able to share and communicate without the dangers, abuse, unauthorised use and vigilance from horrendous Facebook is just a joy. For the rest, Circle is a very intuitive platform, easy to move around, with amazing capabilities for very large groups of people, and able to host linking relevant video-call recordings from the learning portal.
A2L improvements I'd like to see on the CVP Circle Forum.
> Have different Circle chats/feeds for each week. The current chat is an endless overwhelming dump of anything and everything: exercises, colour palettes, journaling, pieces being worked on, support questions, final pieces, suggestions, queries, progress of artwork, and what's not. Another option is not organising the subchapter by week but by subject matter, e.g. exercises, questions, feedback, work in progress, final pieces, etc. All of this would benefit the flow.
> Let us decide whether we want our photos downloaded or not. At the moment, the photos can be downloaded by other fellow participants without the artist's consent.
> I'd like clear information of what happens to the participants' photos once the chat id archived. Can they be used by third parties without A2L consent? Can A2L use them without consent? Are the images published on the chat subject to commons? I had to privately message the team to get that info.
> Allow us to follow/unfollow people (and vice versa)
> Allow us to reduce the size of the photo shown, the canvas size, on the uploader.
SOME OF THE NUGGETS I LEARNED
> The power that community support has for artists that do not have that in their real life.
> Loud and white conversations in a painting.
> The power of value and colour value.
> How to use a wet palette.
> Creating chromatic blacks.
> Creating lovely greens out of yellow oxide and black.
> Mother paint used to harmonize colours.
> Collage glueing system.
> How painting energy shows in the body and how this is the channel that puts things on the canvas.
> Being called an artist by other artists.
> That art is a solace from my daily hard job.
> Grateful that I was able to have this awesome experience despite the financial struggle.
> Learning that alumni have massive discounts on the following year if you decide to joy.
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