Artyfactory Information

Artyfactory is a website that offers free art and design lessons for all. You can learn how to draw, paint and design by following our illustrated step by step instructions. We are building a growing resource of art lessons, art history notes, ideas and techniques designed to improve your artistic skills and to increase your enjoyment in creating artworks.

Artyfactory is an expanding collection of art lessons that were designed, illustrated and written by myself, John MacTaggart, an art teacher from Glasgow, Scotland. I graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1974 and have more than thirty years teaching experience. One day, a few years ago, I sat down with a library book to try to teach myself something about web design. Artyfactory is the result so far.

Still Life is the best subject in art for both learning and teaching the skills of drawing and painting. Still Life teaches you how to look at an object and see it like an artist - with a conscious awareness of its outline, shape, proportions, tone, color, texture and form.

Our step by step still life lessons will teach you the drawing techniques used to create still lifes like the one above. You can see an animated version of each technique in our Still Life Slideshows at the end of every lesson.

Our Art History Timelines offer a simple outline of western and modern art with brief explanations of the most important styles from Gothic Art to Minimalism. They list the major artists and illustrate a key painting from each movement. Where you see a filmstrip link, you can also click on the various animated slideshows for more examples of each artistic style.

At the end of each animal drawing lesson we have included a slideshow which animates the development of that drawing or painting from start to finish. This gives you a deeper insight into the process of building up an artwork.

Our Pop Art Lessons use the iconic portraits of celebrities to demonstrate the bold and colorful techniques of this popular art style from the 1960's. You can explore this style further in Pop Art, one of our latest art appreciation tutorials which can be found in the Art Movements section of our Art Appreciation page.

Another of our recent developments is the Artyfactory Art Quiz Page. This offers you a fun way to develop your knowledge of art and design while demonstrating what you know about the subject. Each quiz is designed as an aid to learning with its own inbuilt assessment and can be used in combination with our lessons.

Our Art Quiz Page can be accessed from any page on Artyfactory by using the question mark button on the navigation bar.

African Masks

Our lessons on African Masks continue to be one of our most popular tutorials. We have doubled the number of mask examples and visually enhanced the navigation between them with thumbnail image links. We have also included interactive maps that indicate the territory of the tribe associated with each mask. You can now test your knowledge at the end of the lesson by using our African Mask Quiz.

We hope that you enjoy using Artyfactory
and find our lessons informative and fun.