Getting Started with Proko

Welcome to Proko!

Our mission is to make Proko the most direct route for you to become a professional in visual arts.

Other than making learning fun with silly yet educational videos, we’re also working on improving the community and feedback aspects of online learning. As more and more students transition online for their art education, community and feedback need to seriously improve to compete with traditional art schools.

Quick Links

Using the Website

Let's get you familiarized with a few important sections of the site.

My Classroom

This is where you’ll find your progress on the courses you’re taking. You can continue where you left in each course. You get a newsfeed of all the activity from students and instructors you follow, from courses you’re taking, and from categories in the community that you’re subscribed to. You can even post your assignment to a lesson that you recently watched, directly from your newsfeed.

Browse

This is where you can find courses, lessons, model packs, and Instructors. When you find a course you want to enroll in, you can get premium, or if you’re fine with just the free content, you can add the course to your classroom. That’ll send community activity from that course to your classroom newsfeed and you can track your progress on it. Most lessons have a discussion area right under, and some have official assignments where you can post your work.

Community

This page has specialized categories for discussions outside of any specific courses. Fostering community discussion is one of the main focuses of the site.

Profiles

Of course everybody gets a profile with albums and an activity feed. Your profile will give people more context about you when they’re critiquing your work and also allows you to make new friends and connections with your fellow students that can last a lifetime. You can edit your profile in the settings. Go follow your classmates and instructors!

How to Start

Stuff you can do now as you start:

Create an account - First of all, if you don’t already have a Proko account, click sign up at the top. It’s free to be part of the community. You don’t have to buy anything unless you want to get some premium content. If you’ve purchased something from Proko before, just login with the same account you had before, all your stuff is still there.
Follow people - Like our instructors. If searching for a specific person, use the search at the top header of the website and click on the ‘people’ tab in the results.
Complete your profile - Make yo’ self look presentable. Decorate your profile by clicking on your profile picture on the top right corner and select ‘settings’.
Add courses to your classroom - On a course or lesson page, under the video there’s a button “Add Course to Classroom”. This will allow you to track your progress and discussions from that course will appear in your Classroom newsfeed.
Subscribe to community categories - On the main community page, you’ll see a Follow button on the right of each category. Turning those on will push discussions from those categories into your newsfeed.
Read the community rules - It’s important that we all understand the rules and guidelines so that no one gets hurt.
Report bugs and give feedback - This is a fairly new website. As you use it you will probably run into a bug or two. Also, anything you wish you could do, but can’t, please do tell. Thank you for helping!!!
Use the site - Start watching the lessons, doing assignments, sharing them in the community, giving others feedback, upvote/downvote, flag spam and inappropriate posts and generally being active on the site! If you’re a long time follower of Proko, you can even post some of your past assignments if you still want feedback on them.
Help Requests - If you’re posting your work for critiques on things that are related to any lessons, please post them in the lesson discussions instead of making new topics for every critique request. That means go to the lesson page, and post it under the video.

What course should I start with?

I recommend beginners start with my drawing basics course. You'll learn the fundamentals like line quality, shape, basic perspective, light, shading, and how to control values and edges. It's a subject through which most people see a lot of growth and improvement in their drawing skills. For more details check out the Drawing Basics Course.

Should I get a premium course?

We'll be the first to admit that it depends on your situation.

If you're only casually interested in learning how to draw on the side, then you can get away with the hundreds of free lessons here such as those in the Figure and Anatomy courses. However, if you're serious about improving your art skills, want to become a pro, or excited about making art a part of your life, then we highly recommend investing in the premium courses.

These are full drawing courses that contain detailed information about important concepts, offer more example drawings to learn from, and contain additional learning materials (assignment demonstration, eBooks, critiques and 3D models) that will aid you in improving your skills quickly.

Do you have any advice for practicing?

It should go without saying, that if you don't practice, you won't improve. Setting aside a little time everyday is the #1 key to getting better. My recommendation is that you set aside at least 1 hour everyday to practice what you learn on this site. If you're on a more advanced lesson and want to improve quicker, I recommend devoting much more time than that. At least 15 hours each week. Try watching one lesson each week, practicing it, and move on.

If you're not looking forward to drawing daily, that's a no no! Drawing should be a fun activity that you're interested in learning. If it feels like a chore, try adding in personal projects you're excited about to your routine so you're not just doing homework all the time.

BTW, Marshall and I have talked a lot about how to practice, what to practice, how to be a good students, and how to recreate art school on our Draftsmen Podcast

Need Help? If you run into any issues with your account, email support@proko.com or use the contact form in the Help Center.