Upgrade your Teaching - Websites for the Artist Teacher
- Luke Kandiah
- Oct 5
- 4 min read
Updated: 54 minutes ago
Gathered here are a select few hidden-gem websites that can make planning, teaching, and creating far more inspiring for art teachers. Add these tools to your arsenal to spark ideas, support classroom practice and upgrade your lessons.
Drawing references:
Figurosity gives you access to a diverse range of fully pose-able 3D models that you can use for figure drawing, anatomy studies, and composition planning. It’s perfect for demonstrating proportion and gesture in the classroom, with models that can be rotated, lit, and viewed from any angle.
Bodies in Motion is a premium reference library of high-resolution photos and 3D scans capturing real human movement. It’s ideal for studying anatomy, gesture, and motion, allowing artists to view figures from multiple angles and analyse form, balance, and rhythm in dynamic poses.
Pexels is a free stock-media library offering high-quality photos and videos that can be used for personal or commercial projects without attribution. It’s a versatile resource for visual references.
Townscaper is a creative way to meditate & relax, but also a fantastic drawing reference when teaching Perspective. Students can set their own challenge-level, angle and draw their creation whilst watching waves beat against the shore and seagulls land on their rooftops.
Azgaar is a world unique to all students. This is a fun cover-lesson worthy task. Set students a time limit to explore and craft their own world, then ask them to draw from screenshots of their design. In the Display settings, you can morph your map design around a planet, which is how we used it in anticipation of our lessons on five-point perspective.
Teaching Materials:
Canva: As an art teacher, you have the opportunity to enhance your creative projects with Canva's premium features...for free! Simply verify your teaching status and you can gain access to an extensive library of design tools, templates and resources that will elevate your teaching materials.
Gallerix is a vast online “virtual museum” of paintings, featuring more than 170 000 works spanning classic and contemporary art. You can browse in high resolution, zoom in on brushwork, explore collections by era or artist, and even turn any famous work into a puzzle.
Colossal is a vibrant online art magazine celebrating creativity across every medium: from sculpture and painting to design and digital installation. Perfect for students researching artists by theme. Want to link sketchbooks to the wider art world? Colossal’s your portal.
Student Art Guide is a treasure trove packed with sketchbook examples, artist analyses, and exam-ready tips. It’s perfect for showing learners what excellence looks like and helping them understand how to hit those top assessment objectives. Best place to look for ready-made 'high-level' exemplars.
Graphic Design:
SpaceTypeGenerator is a kinetic typography tool that animates text into dynamic forms; allowing you to experiment with how words can move and occupy space.
Kern Type is a game where students use their visual judgement to learn the sacred art of Kerning: an essential skill for graphic designers and typographers. Can they beat your highscore?
Grid Type GridType gives you a clean and intuitive tool for designing type based on geometric grids.
Resourceboy is an immense library of free Graphic Design materials. Canva Pro not enough? Resource boy has got you covered. Fonts, Mockups, Photoshop brushes, overlays and more.
TopoExport gives you access to detailed 2D maps and 3D terrain models for any location in the world. It’s perfect for integrating real-world landscape data into projects. Is your A-Level Student wanting to use their home in China (which they have no access to outside of school holidays) as the core centre of their project? now they can!
Liquid Paper Design is a generative fluid & surface-interaction visual tool that lets you play with patterns, refraction, blur, and motion to create mesmerising, liquid-like visuals from your own logo!
Photo Editing:
No Photoshop? No problem!
Pixlr Editor is a free, browser-based photo editor that offers tools for image retouching, layering, and design. It’s great for quick edits or creative projects without needing to install software, making it ideal for classroom and student use.
Tooooools is an online creative tool that lets you upload images or videos and transform them with visual effects like patterns, distortion, and colour shifts. It’s quick, free to use, and great for experimenting with digital textures and styles.
Animation:
At my school I run the Animation Society, these websites cater towards making Art that comes to life!
Sketch by Meta is an AI-powered tool by Meta that lets you upload or create sketches and then watch them come to life with motion and animation.
BrushNinja is a free online 2D animation suite.
Wiggly Paint is like MS Paint, but worse & will haunt your nightmares.
Blender (Free Download) is my bread and butter. A professional-grade 3D animation All-in-one platform, which has been used to make feature films that have won oscars. It shouldn't be free, but it is. If you fancy learning, exploring or experimenting with students, I highly recommend you to take the leap. There is a wealth of free tutorials online to get you started.
Data visualisation:
Making the boring stuff more glamorous!
Napkin is an AI-powered tool that creates customisable graphics from any data uploaded as text.
Flourish Studio is another alternative AI-powered tool that creates customisable graphics from any data uploaded from spreadsheets.
Craft guides:
The Toy Maker is a charming resource filled with printable paper toys, masks, and models that bring a sense of play and imagination into the art room. The designs are whimsical yet practical, making them ideal for teaching construction, form, and design thinking.
Free Sewing is a free platform for custom sewing patterns based on precise body measurements. It’s a brilliant resource for exploring textiles, fashion, and design technology,
Fold Book Art offers tutorials and pattern guides for transforming old books into sculptural artworks through precise folding techniques.
Web-design: Making a website like this one? Use these tools to boost your process and extend your support to Artist Teachers around the world.
Anime.js is a sleek and powerful JavaScript animation library that lets you add and embed premade codes into your website.
ReactBits is a curated library of animated React UI components you can drop into web projects for lively motion and interaction. It offers a suite of text animations, background effects, and modular elements to help turn static visuals into dynamic experiences.
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[This post exists within an organic archive, the contents of this post is not fixed at the time of its publication but will grow as more and more websites are added to it.]
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