Study with me
Teaching is my side-gig. I’ve helped train and launch hundreds of successful creative pros, and worked with students who are pursuing their creative passions and seeking to create a livelihood from their work.
My courses are designed to help creatives — whether student, hobbyists, or practicing pros — sharpen their creative skills and build their creative businesses. I teach the principles and practice of design and illustration with a focus on perception, form language, and critical thinking.
The ACademy launches soon.
Alvalyn Creative ACademy, an online educational initiative offering Alvalyn’s college-level courses in design, drawing, illustration, and creative business, but without the costly enrollment fees of degree and certificate programs. Currently in soft-launch with a few fundamental courses available, the full launch is coming in Summer 2026. Add yourself to my mailing list to get announcements and tips to boost your creative skills.
My courses range from fundamentals and principles of design, color, drawing, design history and critical practice to professional preparation and entrepreneurship — the very same courses I teach with world class design schools, but made accessible and affordable without sacrificing substance and quality.
My teaching approach centers on visual perception and critical thinking while at the same time developing and honing technical skills.
All courses are on demand and self-paced, with options for assignments, cohort Q&A sessions, and critique sessions.
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VISUAL DESIGN
Two-Dimensional Design
An introduction to design fundamentals, including exercises in figure-ground relationships, color interaction, line, texture, shape, scale, balance, rhythm, emphasis, and organization of elements
in the 2D plane, this course develops perceptual skills, sensitivity, creative awareness, and the technical ability necessary to handle a variety of design media.
Three-Dimensional Design
Lectures, demonstrations, and exercises dealing with the understanding of design fundamentals, this course examines abstract structuring in 2D and 3D design, use of construction materials, and fundamentals of modular systems and their modifications and variations.
Color Theory
Covers the perception of color, its permutations, and its dimensions, using traditional as well as contemporary methods, emphasizing individual experimentation through lab exercises and demonstrations. Topics include the color wheel, digital color, Munsell and Albers theories, perception, symbolism, and psychology, pattern-painting techniques, and the applications of color theories to art, architecture, and interior design. Student projects and lectures combine intense exploration of theories with hands-on experience in a variety of media.
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CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The Thriving Creativepreneur
Learn how to sidestep starving artist syndrome! Specifically designed to help independent creatives thrive in today’s gig economy, these 7-week workshops address the total picture of a freelance business. Whether you’re currently freelancing, just starting out, or simply curious, you’ll learn the crucial mindset shifts necessary to transition from “creative” to “creativepreneur.”
Crafting Your Creative Brand
Designed to help independent designers, creatives and artists develop or revitalize their own distinct, marketable brands in order to make an impact and build a long-term creative career. Students explore their aspirational goals, core values and distinct approaches as the basis for designing their visual brand identity. They focus on crafting and presenting a consistent visual message that will be relevant to clients, collectors, fans and patrons. Approaches to marketing, content creation, curation and establishing one’s authorship will be explored. Students will develop their brand strategies which they can implement immediately.
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