The bulk of this post was written a month ago (as you can tell from the mention of Labor Day). While the timing of certain parts isn't applicable anymore, the bulk of it is and so I'd like to publish it.

Earlier this month, I decided to give New Masters Academy a try. It's an online art education service similar to Proko in that the majority of the content is pre-recorded course videos with assignments mixed in. However, where Proko offers a la carte courses that can be bought for a one-time fee, NMA gives you access to everything for a monthly or annual subscription. That can either be a really good or really bad deal depending on how much time you devote to studying.

Before I continue, a quick table showing some prices for reference (I'll explain Library vs Library+ later):

What's prompting me to write this is that NMA just sent me an email about an upcoming sale for Labor Day and I'm debating whether or not I'd like to renew my subscription. The email didn't give an exact discount, but a quick search shows that last years' was 40% off. This would put the price for a year of access to all of NMA's courses at less than access to just a few of Proko's.

Price isn't everything, of course. I could buy a few tutorials off of Gumroad or Itch.io (or whatever people are using now) for 15$ a piece. Both Proko and NMA offer very good video courses with high production value and good teachers. Additionally, both offer feedback - though Proko relies more heavily on free community feedback whereas NMA offers it for the rather steep price of about 36$ per 7 minutes of critique. NMA also gives very good self-assessment and grading rubrics for each of their courses that include clear expectations and common mistakes to look for.

There's also the matter of NMA's "Library+" subscription. It's a hefty additional 270$ per year at time of writing, but it offers you access to their image and 3d model reference libraries, a "rare art book library", and recordings of previous live classes. I haven't used them because my current subscription doesn't include those, but the reference libraries do seem to be genuinely extensive.

But now to talk more directly about the feel of NMA vs Proko's courses.

Proko's course, of which I've only taken ones taught by Stan Prokopenko himself, are sort of "casually professional". It's very good information and he tries to keep it entertaining by having you practice with sea turtles and robots rather than still life fruits and stoneware. Rarely did I feel bored watching a Proko video.

NMA, on the other hand, is very dry. It reminds me of some of my college math courses. This is very good for the signal-to-noise ratio but it means I'd have to try really hard to keep the course fun. And that's... unfortunately a problem for me.

Something I've learned about myself over the past year and a half of doing art is that I have a very bad habit of working only on practice and not working on any personal work. This is counter to every art course: spend at least half your time working on your own work for non-study purposes.

• Drawabox calls it the 50% rule and tells it to you before you make your first line.
• Proko's Drawing Basics course starts by telling you to do what you must to keep drawing fun.
• Zapata's course explicitly says that spending all of your time on art study to the detriment of everything else "does not mean you disciplined, cool, or a good artist. Quite the opposite, in fact".
• NMA's "Path to Mastery" document that they give you when you sign up tells you that you'll get the most by spending half your time learning and half creating "finished pieces".

For some reason I severely struggle with this rule. If I don't use a time-tracking app to ensure I'm spending half my time on "my own" work, I'd estimate that I spend 85% of it doing various forms of study or drills.