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Skool Blog
May 24, 2018
Beyond the Klassroom Find your community
Lots of students ask us how they can find people in their area to sketch with. We suggest that they begin by looking for local sketching groups on Facebook or Meetup.com. But sometimes the best way to find people who sketch is to look at the people in your community. Student Elizabeth Merriman created a group of watercolor art journal enthusiasts …
Read more »May 22, 2018
Draw Tip Tuesday: How to use a bamboo pen
In this week’s Draw Tip Tuesday, Koosje Koene, co-founder of Sketchbook Skool, plays with how to use a bamboo pen. Sometimes using a tool that doesn’t feel familiar or comfortable to you can push you to draw in a different style, and you discover something new! Check out Koosje’s creation with her bamboo pen in this video.
Read more »May 20, 2018
Student Art: Sketching the craftsman
Drawing people is one of our favorite challenges, and some students take their urban sketching, figure drawing, and portraiture one step further by capturing those around them engaged in their own creative projects. Observing the people around you building, fixing, creating, or tinkering can give you a new understanding of the pieces that make up …
Read more »May 17, 2018
Inspiration: You are not alone
You need to go way out to a cabin in the woods to write a great novel. You must move up to a garret on the top of floor of a tenement to paint masterpieces. Do not disturb. Genius at work. The myth of the solitary artist, toiling alone, far from the madding crowd. We’ve all heard it. And yet I wonder, is solitude really the key to creativity? …
Read more »May 15, 2018
Draw Tip Tuesday: How to add highlights
In this week’s Draw Tip Tuesday, Koosje Koene, co-founder of Sketchbook Skool, shows you how to make highlights with watercolor, color pencil, and pencil. Think of using the white of the paper as your highlight for your drawing. Draw around the highlight. This is a different approach than adding shading to an object you’ve already drawn. Practice …
Read more »May 8, 2018
Draw Tip Tuesday: Using a dip pen
In this week’s Draw Tip Tuesday, Koosje Koene, co-founder of Sketchbook Skool, shows us how to use a dip pen! These pens are different from fountain pens. Instead of filling them with ink, you dip them in ink, hence their name. These are fun tools since the nibs are usually flexible and can create different lines with pressure, and as they run …
Read more »May 1, 2018
Draw Tip Tuesday: How to paint with coffee
In this week’s Draw Tip Tuesday, Koosje Koene, co-founder of Sketchbook Skool, creates a cool background in her sketchbook using coffee! Have you had your morning coffee? Have you painted with it too? Coffee creates Koosje’s great brown background this week. Try it!
Read more »April 30, 2018
A Drawing A Day May 2018 Drawing Word Prompt List
Here are your May prompts for A Drawing A Day! Drawing every day is a great way to improve your skills and can also help you see the world around you in a fresh, new way. Be sure to share your daily drawings on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest with the hashtag #sbsadrawingaday and for more inspiration check out #SBSsketchbookinspiration …
Read more »April 26, 2018
Art Inspiration: The Art of the Sketchbook
From the get-go, we called it “Sketchbook Skool”. Not “Sketch Skool”. Not “Watercolor Skool”. Not “Creative Skool” nor “Life Changing Ideas Skool”. We gave it a name that would celebrate the art form. Advancing an idea the artists on our fakulty agreed was essential but overlooked. That sketchbooks weren’t just rough drafts for ‘real’ works of …
Read more »April 24, 2018
Draw Tip Tuesday: Draw your keys
In this week’s Draw Tip Tuesday, Koosje Koene, co-founder of Sketchbook Skool, shows us her breakfast with ink and a colored marker, nothing more! Keeping it simple doesn’t mean losing dynamics in your drawing. Check out how she uses long shadows for added drama, and how the addition of one color makes the whole drawing pop.
Read more »April 22, 2018
Art Candy: Hahnemühle Watercolor Sketchbook
Last year I noticed a watercolor sketchbook in my favorite art supply shop that I had never seen before. So of course, I bought it. It’s from Hahnemühle, an established German brand. When starting a new sketchbook there’s always a period of getting used to how the paper handles your materials, but soon enough I was filling up the book quickly. It …
Read more »April 20, 2018
Interview: The History of Sketchbook Skool
I learned about Sketchbook Skool from my mother who is a student, and I did as much research as I could in the months that followed about the teachers and the skool. Yet there were still things I didn’t know. In honor of the skool’s 4th anniversary (it was April 4th!), I asked the founders, Koosje Koene and Danny Gregory, for an interview to …
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