The Virtual Art Academy is designed to cater to everyone from those who are more casual about their art, to highly motivated painters who want to take their skills to a very high professional level. So you can do just a couple of hours a week to several days, depending on your goals and how much time you have available. There is no set schedule, so you can take as long as you like to complete the lessons.


Time needed

The full program is 192 lessons. There are an average of 2 assignments per lesson.  Each assignment takes around 2-4 hours. I recommend you do the minimum repetitions on the first go around. Later, for certain key assignments, you can do more repetitions, using the Spiral of Learning philosophy, which I designed to help students continually strengthen their foundation. This approach helps more experienced painters continue to improve their work during their careers, so it doesn't stand still.


You can choose one of these work goals - the pace is up to you.

  • OPTION 1 - One principle per week, read lesson, look at other students' submissions, but don't do assignments. A total of 15 minutes per week. This is the shortest amount of time, but doesn't build skills as well as all of the following options.
  • OPTION 2 - One assignment per week, at 2-4 hours per assignment. A total of 3 hours per week. 
  • OPTION 3 - One lesson per week, average 2 assignments per lesson.  A total of 6 hours per week.
  • OPTION 4 - Two lessons per week, average 2 assignments per lesson.  A total of 12 hours per week.
  • OPTION 5 - Four lessons per week, average 2 assignments per lesson.  A total of 24 hours per week.



After your first two years of study, you should come back and do more repetitions of the key assignments. This time around, you will have more experience and will have new insights on how to do the assignments. We call this approach the Spiral of Learning™.


Community interaction

It is a good idea to do some regular work on the assignments in the program. As long as you are working on the assignments you will see steady progress. It is better if you share them to the online campus so you can get interaction and feedback from other students, and in turn give other students feedback on their work. In general, the more a student engages on the online campus in giving feedback to others, the deeper will become your own knowledge. My philosophy is that as soon as you learn something, then teach it to others so that you completely internalize that knowledge, and identify points that you don't fully understand yourself.