In 1997 Michael Britton and Carmel Fowers leased an antiquated one-story building and started up the Vancouver Academy of Art. Michael had been teaching portrait and figure drawing, and also his perenially popular course Painting the Figure in Watercolor for many years but had always felt constrained by the time limits imposed on his courses, generally three hour classes once a week over a period of eight weeks. Too often the course would end just as his students were starting to make real advancements in their drawing.

As Artistic Director, Michael had the freedom to develop courses and extend them as necessary for his students' benefit without having to continually battle with inflexible administration departments.

For Michael teaching the foundational skills of drawing and painting was never just a job to supplement the income earned from the sales of this work. He has always felt that teaching is a duty and an affordable art education should be available to anyone with the desire and ambition to learn.

Michael's initial training was at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto and the Art Students League in New York. He then studied for several years at the New York Academy of Art where he was granted a full tuition scholarship. During his career Michael has worked for several major advertising agencies in New York, taught drawing courses for Walt Disney Studios animators and exhibits his work internationally.

The Vancouver Academy of Art offered a broad range of realist art courses at affordable tuitions until late 2004 when the lease expired and a restrictive zoning code spelt the end of Michael's academy.

During that time the internet presented a new frontier for artists' training. Until then high quality art training was only available in major cities such as New York, Chicago, London and Sydney. You either had to live in a major city or have to travel to attend a workshop at a significant cost.

Since the 1980's there have been video tape drawing and painting lessons; some were very good, most were of dubious benefit. Before then there were correspondence courses where you received and returned your lessons by mail. In the late 1990's the DVD format began to replace VHS video tape and the explosive growth of the internet offered vast new arrays of education opportunities.

But there is a dark side to internet education. Many DVD's are offered by unqualified enterprises and, all too often, beginning artists were instilled with poor practices and skills. Internet piracy and widespread copyright violation has dissuaded many gifted artists from teaching - that is the true cost of theft. Additionally, the dubious business of renting artists' teaching DVDs has negatively impacted the production of new courses. Technically it is legal to rent out DVDs but the artist receives no royalties and, frankly, it is a parasitic business that profits from the labor of others.

The advent of instant MP4 downloads is changing the corrosive effects of piracy. Each instant download is encrypted with a unique identifier making prosecution of offenders much easier. Copyright law has changed in many countries. It is now a serious criminal offence to illegally upload a movie or other intellectual property and a number of internet thiefs are now serving significant prison sentences.

Artacademy.com is now in the process of switching over to MP4 instant downloads which means that Michael's training workshops will be available at substantial savings to you. There is no shipping and printing costs and your workshops can be transferred onto an USB stick and played on either a computer, IPAD and also newer MP4 capable televisions.