Croquis Cafe in November 2026 is a $36-a-year membership plus YouTube. The best alternatives for figure drawing: Line of Action, Quickposes, SketchDaily.
The best Croquis Cafe alternatives depend on the job. For timed gesture practice, Line of Action and Quickposes are free browser timers. For finding a specific pose, SketchDaily has filters. For structure, Posemaniacs offers 3D models. For long studies and finished work, curated photo packs give you steady lighting, high resolution and a clear licence.
You have been drawing along with Croquis Cafe for a few months. The 30-second warm-ups feel automatic now, you have a favourite model or two, and the sessions have quietly become the spine of your practice. Then one of three things happens: you start recognising poses you have already drawn twice, you need a specific angle for a piece and cannot find it, or you finish a painting and realise you have no idea whether you are allowed to publish it. That is usually the moment people go looking for alternatives — not because Croquis Cafe let them down, but because a single free resource cannot cover every job.
Yes. When we checked on 2 November 2026, croquis.cafe was live as a paid membership site: $36 a year for one artist, or $250 a year for one teacher plus 100 students per semester. The CroquisCafe YouTube channel was online too, so the free route still exists.
The old address croquiscafe.com did not load for us, and onairvideo.com only loaded a redirect script. If an old bookmark stops working, use croquis.cafe or go straight to the channel.
The $36 Artist membership lists more than 600 life drawing video sessions, over 200 360-degree videos and more than 22,000 searchable model photos, including portraits, expressions, hands, feet and heads. FastSketch runs personalised timed sessions from those photos. Downloading photos is listed as a Teacher-only feature ( Croquis Cafe membership page , checked 2 November 2026).
Artist members can, according to the Croquis Cafe usage policy : the references may be used for personal work or artwork sold commercially, with no attribution needed. The photos and videos themselves may not be shared, reposted, manipulated or incorporated in other works, and artist members may not teach with them.
Membership lasts one year from purchase. The policy is written for members, so if you only watch on YouTube, do not assume it covers you.
Published 2026-07-22 on the Refimages blog.