Creating a Masterpiece {Review}

I am not naturally artistic.  Homeschooling with the Charlotte Mason method means exploring the fine arts and drawing. Home educating an only meant taking out art supplies for one which is a real chore and not one I have enjoyed that is until now.  Now I look for reasons to do art every single day together with Nathaniel. We were given a monthly membership with Creating a Masterpiece to review and will continue to share our masterpieces in our weekly virtual fridge on Thursdays. We have both been encouraged to pursue creating art with each  success we have encountered creating beautiful pieces of art with artist Sharon Hofer. 

What is Creating a Masterpiece?
Creating a Masterpiece is an online streaming art class presented by Sharon Hofer who is a master artist and currently teaches students from her studio and internationally.  Her goal is to bring quality instruction and projects taught in such a way that they will inspire and encourage students to create a masterpiece of their very own. 

This image on Creating a Masterpiece
inspired me to give the projects a try.

Creating A Masterpiece teaches art technique in many media, building mastery so that students can go on to create their own projects. The instruction is simple enough for young children to follow, and the projects taught are the kind of high quality work that appeal to high schoolers and adults alike. Even young children can create beautiful artwork using media that is usually taught only in high school.

You can find more in depth explanations about the method and how to use Creating a Masterpiece on their What we Teach page.

How does it Work?

 After logging in you will be taken to the Home page.  Here you will find all the available lessons you have subscribed to.  Navigation is very easy.  On the left you will find a list of Art Mediums (with a colour coded dot) which are used or on the right you will find the specific lessons. Each lesson is depicted in a frame with the name and art medium below it.

If you click on a specific medium you will be shown all the art lessons available using that specific medium.  To return to the home page simply click on the Creating a Masterpiece logo on the top right.

After selecting your project you will be taken to that project home page where you will read a little background on the project's inspiration and a short outline of the technique the student will be using. Clicking on the blue link at the bottom takes you to the first lesson page.

All the projects are taught via short tutorial video's.  Sharon coaches students in proper technique and demonstrates each step by step process of the specific techniques used in the project.  Video lessons average around five minutes a session and will autoplay the next lesson.  Some of the projects we did took a week to complete as we did one short lesson a day and others we were so exited on our progress we spent a good hour working through each lesson so we could see the end result. This lesson was a lot of fun and took two sessions to do because the first step had to be completely dry before we could do step two.

Below the video lessons you will find the colour swatches you will need for the lesson followed by a list of art supplies and house hold items needed.  Below this is a box containing helpful tips to help make your Masterpiece a success.

Each lesson also has lesson highlights.  These are graphics depicting highlighted steps in the lesson progress followed by the available downloads.

Here you will be given a high resolution image of the completed project should you want to print it to show your students so they have a sample in front of them of what they are aiming for.

A full supply list in pdf format. This lists the list of art supplies and house hold items needed as well as a helpful table at a glance of how many of each items you will need if you are doing this project with multiple students.

The purchase supplies button is an affiliate link which takes you to Dickblick.com where you will see the lesson name, instructor and description of the art supply list. The list is divided into required items and recommended items.  You can view a sample of this here African Sunset Art Supplies {Creating a Masterpiece Affiliate link}.

At the bottom there is a sample of pictures to inspire you in using the art technique to create your own Masterpiece.

Projects available 
Creating a Masterpiece is a work in progress and is constantly being updated with new projects.  Currently there are over 144 lessons over  six levels and Art in History available. We tried a few projects on multiple levels.

There are currently 18 types of media taught in the program, including:

• Acrylic
• Batik
• Block Printing
• Carving
• Conte' Crayon
• Copper Tooling
• Glass Mosaic
• Gouache
• Ink
• Mixed Media
• Oil Painting
• Oil Pastel
• Pencil/Charcoal
• Sculpture
• Silk Painting
• Soft Pastel
• Watercolor
• Wood Burning

Samples of our work

Beginners project Lessons in Mixed Media: Candlelight.

Beginners: Lesson in oil pastel: Winter Cabin.

Level 1 - Tropical Clown Fish

Level 4: Puppy Love

Try a FREE sample lesson
You can try a FREE sample project, which is divided over three lessons  using pastels and black paper.

Drawn by Nathaniel age 11

Drawn by Chareen

What is the Cost?
There are monthly or annual student plans available, which provide unlimited family access to all the projects. An individual level may be purchased with full access to that level for a year. Group membership plans are available for those who wish to use Creating A Masterpiece in a classroom setting.

Connect on Social Media
You can connect with Creating A Masterpiece on Facebook.

My thoughts
We are both loving the classes on Creating a Masterpiece.  You do not need to be an artist or artistic to create a Masterpiece.  With Sharon's gentle coaching and encouragement anyone can create a beautiful masterpiece of their very own. If you have a student who loves to create art with many different mediums  you are guaranteed to find something here for them to do.  No matter what your ability Sharon 's coaching will help you create which ever project you have chosen to do. A Vincent van Gogh exhibition is coming to Melbourne this year and in preparation for that we are looking forward to trying out the Post-Impressionism Period: The Eagle (Acrylic Painting) Art in History lesson.

Blessings
Chareen