Welcome to Draw Tip Tuesday!

You often see those ribbons or banners, used with great lettering. On chalkboards at hipster places, and all over Instagram and Pinterest, right? It looks very cool and it looks kind of complicated. But it’s not!
Here’s how you make those banners.

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Every time when the end of a journal draws closer, with just a few pages left – something starts itching. It’s the anticipation, knowing that with just a few pages left, another book is filled with memories, special moments, random sketches and a lot of learning curves.
It’s also the anticipation of a new sketchbook! I don’t know about you, but I have a stack of empty sketchbooks, of different sizes and brands, so I get to choose every time. I like changing format and paper quality, rather than sticking to one particular brand or size. The start of a new sketchbook means new challenges, experiments and play!

So these pages below are quite random – the last one of my Stillman and Birn sketchbook, that I bought in the US. Up next is a Seawhite landscape sketchbook.

Painting fruit with watercolors, and playing around with new tools on the right hand side page: goache!

Enjoying a Saturday afternoon with an espresso, with an interesting perspective – looking downwards from the first floor of the coffee shop.

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Each week, along with the Sketchbook Skool students, I am doing the homework assignment from the kourse called “Beginning”. Except for last week, because I taught that klass myself. We’re in the third week now and this week’s teacher is Prashant Miranda. From India, he inspires the klass to draw the sky – no matter where in the world you are.

I did my homework in Amsterdam, looking out of my living room window and up to the clouds. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing with my watercolors and I don’t even know if I particularly like the art that I made, but it was great fun to play with my watercolors and step out of my comfort zone for this one too!

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A toned paper background can be a lot of fun to work with – you’ll need a bit of a different approach than when using your regular white paper. Especially whites can really pop!

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How do you deal with creative blocks?

When you love making art, it’s quite likely that you sometimes struggle with common creativity challenges like: lack of focus, distraction, procrastination, lack of confidence, time… Choose your pick! You may recognize more than one of these creative blocks – they are often related.

When it comes to my daily drawing habit my challenge is definitely time. I often feel there are so many things to do and sometimes that makes me restless. Which is not the right kind of feeling to nurture creativy. Also, I get easily distracted. By social media for example. And most of the time, I don’t even really enjoy hanging out on Facebook!

Knowing your blocks, recognizing them is already a huge step towards solving them.

But then what? How to deal with it?
The only one who can get you back into that sweet spot of making art, is you. I hope that doesn’t really come liek a surprise, does it? So think about it. About your behavior, about your response to certain situations, and then try to find tricks to get rid of that anxious feeling, stress, distraction, or whatever your creative blocks could be just little dips instead of becoming an excuse for getting into a rut. It can be little things that boost your energy; listening to your favorite music, the smell of coffee, fresh air, drinking a cup of tea…

I go for runs. They totally empty my mind and often I get new ideas during a run. It’s a refresher. No marathons or anything ambitious like that. Sometimes just a 20-minute run will change my perspective for the rest of the day. Also, I block out time for my creative work. I know I work best in chunks of time, so I carve out that time, make sure any distractions like email or social media are out of reach, and usually, combined with a cup of coffee, that will ease the mind and make me happy!

Maybe you’re not in a rut right now. That’s good news!
But you can prevent it to happen, by thinking about clever solutions.

So: what can you do to change that mindset so you keep making awesome art?

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Summer is on my mind…. i wonder if you could tell by my sketchbook pages.

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I am so excited that in Sketchbook Skool, we keep adding amazing artists to our Fakulty. Nina Johansson, who is a fantastic illustrator, urban sketcher and watercolourist is officially joining us, and I just got back from Stockholm, where we filmed a bunch of lessons with her.
She is very inspiring, and so is her art, but Nina is also my kinda gal – positive, passionate, skillful and she has a great sense of humour to top it all off.

We’d been preparing for the video shoot via email and Skype – and then meeting in person is such a treat – especially since she’s been such a great host to make my stay in Stockholm convenient and fun.
Thanks to all great prep work and to our creative film crew, everything went smooth and we had a lot of fun during the shoot!

Gabrielle (sound), Me, Peter (camera) and Nina

An extra treat after wrapping up was having dinner and a sketch with Nina in the center of Stockholm, celebrating our accomplishment.

And on my way back, I made good use of my travel time and enjoyed drawing.

I absolutely love how the drawing below turned out – using just a fountain pen and a grey brushpen. It also opened up an interesting conversation with two of the flight attendants who spotted my drawing. I love how art can connect!

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Welcome to Draw Tip Tuesday!

Sometimes you’re just happily mixing your watercolours and then you get to a point where you apply too much! The drawing could get muddy… I’m sure you’ve had this happen before as well. Don’t panic – there’s a trick for this!

The post Draw Tip Tuesday: A Watercolour Trick! appeared first on Make Awesome Art.

So I was practicing my brush strokes and brush lettering, really enjoying myself doing so.

And I thought I might as well write a note. Then I started drawing the letters and got so absorbed with drawing the shapes, that I totally didn’t realize what I was writing. It made me laugh out loud.

I am actually still giggling. Mistakes are bound to happen when you’re learning and adding skills to your creative arsenal. So let’s embrace the mistakes, and celebrate them!

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Last Friday, the new term inSketchbook Skool started, and it’s pretty exciting! Not only am I teaching my class on sketching food, called ‘Draw It Like It’s Hot’, also the 6-week kourses ‘Beginning’ and ‘Expressing’ are happening as we speak! And it’s not too late to sign up!
This week’s teacher in the kourse called ‘Beginning’ is Sketchbook Skool’s co-founder Danny Gregory, and we’re off to a great start!
His klass is all about how drawing makes us feel and that we all are creative – in our own way.
As Sketchbook Skool’s head master and head mistress, Danny and I alternate doing the homework assignments along with all the others in the Sketchbook Skool Kommunity.

So here’s what I came up with this week, for his homework called ‘Draw And Feel’

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Today we’re using a stamp pad. And our fingers!
Because after all: who needs fancy art supplies if you have your imagination and some color?

I see fruit everywhere – even in my finger prints! I guess my mind is all set on Foodie Art, since my online class ‘Draw It Like It’s Hot’ started last Friday – it’s not too late to join me in a 4-week journey of delicious artmaking fun. Click here to enroll.

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Here’s an interesting question:
A student in one of my online classes asked: “Why, when an artist makes a messy ink sketch does it look so inspiring, but when I make a messy sketch it looks juvenile? What is the missing quality?“

What a great question!
I don’t have the knowledge, nor do I have the answer, but I can share my thoughts:

Regardless of who made it, messy sketches are very interesting!

I think ‘judging’, or ‘curating’ by finding them great/inspiring or bad/juvenal is something we do from a certain perspective. We get influenced easily as well. If you look at a messy page signed by Picasso, you will know about its value, because of Picasso’s signature below it. If you look at your own messy page, a voice inside your head will tell you: ‘what a mess! So you think you’re an artist, huh?! Well, you better think again!’ Or something similar. Am I right?

It’s not the sketch that makes you think these thoughts. It’s your inner critic.

So ‘the missing quality’ would probably be: confidence.
Then again, here’s a little secret:

Most artists don’t know what they’re doing either. Just doing it anyway, in spite of insecurity, adds character and therefore quality.

There’s another important element that one of the students pointed out: time.
Right after finishing a drawing, sometimes you feel an immediate sense of accomplishment. Other times, you just think ‘Meh’, and you put the piece away. Onto the next one!
But if you get back to it later that day, week or month – you’ll be looking at it with a whole new pair of eyes! Your opinion about it will change, and you will appreciate the drawing in a different way.

Also: if you don’t have much time, you may rush through a drawing and that will show in the result. Or you might be making that mess because you are unfamiliar with the art tools you’re using. Which is all part of experimenting, playing, exploring and practicing. Which are things every artist needs to do. Beginners as well as popular, famous artists.

Does any of this make sense at all to you?

The question is too big to try and answer in a blogpost, but it is such an interesting topic – I wanted to quickly share this with you!

Hopefully, this gives you some food for thought, and a different perspective to look at the art you make.

The post About Those Messy Sketches Of Yours… appeared first on Make Awesome Art.

Draw Tip: Do you have no idea what to draw? Draw people! It’s a great exercise on drawing features, hands, gestures, postures and shadows, and to try out all kinds of art tools. And: you will never run out of subjects because they are everywhere.

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Today I will be live streaming on Facebook! I’ll show you some of my favourite sketchbook pages, give you some ideas on how to fill your daily sketchbook pages, and if you’d like to ask any questions you’d like me to answer, you can!

The event takes place at 18:00 my time, (CET), which is Noon EST, and if you’re in Australia it’s actually 2 am on Friday… sorry about that! Well, have a night cap with me or watch the rerun later.

Sign up for the event on Facebook by following this link. This is also where you can leave your questions on beforehand, so you’ll make sure I get to answer them! See you on Facebook!

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Wake up and smell the crayons!

Do you like making art? Do you like making food?
Then I think you are gonna love my 4-week online art class ‘Draw It Like It’s Hot!’ It’s all about sketching food and illustrating recipes!

Why wait? class starts this Friday! Come along and join ‘Draw It Like It’s Hot!” for only $69! Click here to enroll

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Welcome to Draw Tip Tuesday!

Here’s a great way to fill a page with lush watercolours.

There’s more where this came from! Follow me on YouTube by clicking here

Do you like the juiciness of all this? Are you thirsty for more?
Then why don’t you join my online art class on foodie-art? It’s called ‘Draw It Like It’s Hot!’ and it starts this Friday in Sketchbook Skool. Let’s make delicious art together. Find out more and join me by following this link.

The post Draw Tip Tuesday: Watercolours and Pen appeared first on Make Awesome Art.

Now that I work in a studio outside of my home (bye bye tiny spare room and sweatpants, hello spacious room and cute top!), I plan ahead a bit on my portable lunch sometimes. I love bringing tasty food with me to enjoy during a break when I’m at the studio.
Whether it’s a peanut butter sandwich I enjoy on a bench in the sun, or some leftovers from last night’s dinner, I just really like my meals and I want to make them count.
But you know, those weeks where the days fly by and you’re left with just some scraps in the fridge? Well, then I just really love to get creative and I kind of giggle to myself when munching on my copious lunch!

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Traveling is so great. And when you bring a sketchbook, each commute, flight or drive becomes so entertaining!
I don’t mind getting stuck in a traffic jam anymore, because it allows me to draw even more! When I’m not driving myself that is. Obviously.

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Welcome to Draw Tip Tuesday!

Do you have a favourite dish or recipe? Why not draw it then? It can be very simple to do.

What’s your favorite food? Draw it! And if you are hungry for more, make sure you don’t miss out on my online workshop ‘Draw It Like It’s Hot!’. Four weeks of delicious art making and fun!

Click here to learn more and sign up today!

The post Draw Tip Tuesday: Draw Your Food appeared first on Make Awesome Art.

I am a big believer that outside of the comfort zone is where the magic happens. I don’t just believe it does, I know it does.

Here’s a little example of a recent experience in facing creative fears:

The other day I had a delicious meal and ate Dutch asparagus. Those white asparagus come from the south of the Netherlands and can be harvested only for a very short season so every year. So these beauties are celebrated on the plate. All the more reason to draw them too!

So I did.

Although that comic-style recipe illustration doesn’t quite match the rest of the page, I loved working on this and it could be the basis for a version 2.0, an illustrated recipe to send to They Draw And Cook for example.

The eventual purpose (if any) didn’t matter, because I was just enjoying the process of drawing in my sketchbook.

Now it definitely needed color, that was for sure.
So my brush hovered over my color palette, deciding whether to go for a safe color or something different. I wanted a contrasting color and looked at the red watercolor in my palette and thought: red can be quite aggressive, it’s kind of scary.

If something is scary… Do it anyway!

All the more reason, actually.
It might surprise you how much you can accomplish, when exploring the unknown or unpredictable.
And besides: what is the worst that could happen?
My father taught me something valuable, which he learned from his mom: to remind yourself that “your life doesn’t depend on it”. This is especially true when it’s just a drawing!

So I decided to make that red paint bleed all over the page and then also added a layer of red color pencil to deepen the color. And I love where it brought this page.
It may be too bright, and the red doesn’t reflect the delicate flavor of the dish, but it looks great as a sketchbook spread.

What scares you? Go and do something with it. Today.

Oh and if this asparagus drawing tastes like more: join my 4-week online class on illustrating recipes in June. Click here to learn more and sign up!

The post How To Face Your Fears appeared first on Make Awesome Art.

I am lucky to live with someone who doesn’t mind me drawing him. It’s not like I make him sit and pose for me as a life drawing model, but I do draw him when he practices playing one of his instruments, sits reading, or gaming for example.
Sometimes I study just details and come really close by, staring like a maniac at him until I filled a whole page with gestures, features, details.

It’s quite hard to capture ‘him’ though. Maybe because he is so close to me, that makes it harder to draw him? Anyway; this might be a good thing because it’s such a reat exercise and fun to do. And practice does help. The third drawing below, the one where I drew him while he was playing a game; it kind of looks like him!

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Beginning a new sketchbook can be quite exciting and a little bit scary. You don’t know what the paper will be like, how it will combine with your favourite art tools, whether or not you’re going to like it as much as the previous sketchbook you just filled and got kind of attached to… and above all a lot of people fear that first blank page. WHAT to do with it? It has to be meaningful, because it’s a new beginning, it should be a great drawing because it’s the first page of many to follow. Really?

I mean, really really?

No. It’s just the first page. Go for it, if the drawing isn’t as great as you hoped, there is a whole sketchbook left to make up for that flawed drawing. And does it HAVE to be meaningful? Says who?

I got this Stillman and Birn sketchbook on a trip to New York and dived right into it. I sat on the couch and my husband was playing the banjo so I thought I’d draw him. A nice way to practice gesture drawings, hands, faces. as soon as I put the first lines onto the paper I knew things were going to be out of proportion, but I went along with it anyway. To fix things a little, I kept adding things and used hatching lines, and added a bit of blue watercolor. Then I just flipped the page and went on with the next one, not really thinking about it that much and leaving the left page blank.
Then, in Sketchbook Skool‘s kourse ‘Polishing’, we have an amazing Mixed Media artist: Juliana Coles. I am so happy for her to join the Fakulty! What she does is a different style of art journaling than we’ve covered so far in Sketchbook Skool. She layers her pages with drawings, paint, collage, lettering and anything she can find and feels the page needs. she uses writing to spill her thoughts or emotions onto the page and by adding layers of colours and lettering and photos and more paint, she builds very personal, emotional and just beautiful sketchbook pages. She keeps polishing the pages, getting back to them again and again, sometimes over the years. A page is never a finished piece – it can keep evolving and that is so interesting!
It is so different from what I do, and I need to take a big step out of my comfort zone to actually do this mixed media stuff. But outside of the comfort zone IS where the magic happens so I love that challenge! And this is one of the beautiful things about Sketchbook Skool. One week you may be completely inside my comfort zone drawing a meal following Matthew Midgley‘s lead, and a week later you’re exploring and discovering a whole new approach to making art!

So Juliana gives the Sketchbook Skool Students a piece of homework to do the same. She suggests you can look for a page in your sketchbook that you don’t like so much (or that you DO like), and start spicing it up.
So I took out lots of art tools, even ones that I hadn’t used for quite a while and dusted those off, took that page above, and this is what I made:

I also made a video to share my process with the Sketchbook Skool Students, and this is it:

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Welcome to Draw Tip Tuesday!
Do you ever fear that first blank page in a brand new sketchbook? I think we all do. It’s a blank slate, a new start. Which is awesome, but what if that first drawing doesn’t quite work out the way it looked in your head? Um well, nothing disastrous about that, BUT it can make you procrastinate on your first drawing in a new sketchbook. Procrastinating could easily lead you out of the drawing habit, and we don’t want that!
Have no fear. There’s a simple solution and it’s a golden oldie.

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It feels like ages ago, but just a few weeks ago I went for a quick family visit to Switzerland. Between catching up with family, I got some drawing done, too:

The post Travel journal pages appeared first on Make Awesome Art.

This Monday, May 23 I will be teaching a workshop at The Open Draw in Amsterdam. It’ll be all about drawing food, so my mouth is already watering!
If you’re from around, join us at The Open Draw – both beginners and more advanced are welcome!

You can RSVP on Facebook here or at  Meetup.com here.

I hope to see you there!

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