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Whether you like this course will depend on how much feedback you want. The curriculum and the chronology is sound, although the reading assignments are pretty shallow and the video demonstrations are quite bad. However, it's easy enough to Google better explanations of various concepts, and YouTube has hundreds of demonstrations of similar topics that are vastly more professional and helpful, so that's ok. Although each reading assignment is followed by "you can master this topic by doing the following workshop", you of course will not master it so easily. But if you are realistic and willing to practice a lot outside the course curriculum, you will improve.
The feedback (or lack of it) is the biggest failing of this course. I am well into my 4th year of course content, and I have had feedback from Barry Raybould exactly once (and it was pretty basic feedback, too). Sometimes other students give feedback, and sometimes that feedback is helpful, but the opinions of other students who in many instances have even less experience than I do is not really worth the price of admission. Feedback, and early correction of misconceptions before they become habits, is absolutely essential to improving. Each time I submit an assignment into an unresponsive void, I become a little bit more disillusioned. So it is especially annoying when Barry posts frequent, tone-deaf admonitions for students to go on his FaceBook or Instagram feeds to like and comment on his paintings, in order to spread the word about the academy. When students complain that they aren't getting feedback, he often says he doesn't have time. To expect us to help bring in more students so he has even less time spread more thinly is quite ridiculous.
So, would I recommend this course to friends who are trying to learn to paint? Probably not, as it is currently run. If I hadn't paid for it upfront, I would have quit by now. Given the lack of meaningful professional feedback, I could just as well have printed out the curriculum and used Google and YouTube to find better explanations and demonstrations of each topic, and I often wish I had. Some YouTube artists even give feedback! And there is always Udemy, which offers smaller and more specific courses at a fraction of the cost. I wish I could say otherwise, but that is my experience with Virtual Art Academy.
In summary, I would not recommend The Virtual Art Academy to a friend.
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