The joy of teaching the Joy of Sketching!

My online teaching experience so far...

Dear reader,

I thought you may like to have an insider look at how my online course came about and the experience of putting it together. Some of you may already have taken the course, and others of you may have heard me mention it in passing, however, if you’re curious to hear more, about the obstacles/decisions I had to make, and the feedback/reviews received do please read on.

This year saw the release of my first independently run online course The Joy of Sketching on location. I had been wanting to do this since having my first taste of teaching online with professional online course provider Domestika back in 2020 where I taught a course on illustrating a recipe. I enjoyed the format and the medium of video would open up a way of communicating with students from all over and help them to participate in a course that otherwise would be impossible to attend in person. I have been running in-person sketch walks since 2018 and see how beneficial these experiences have been to both professional and hobbyist artists. Exploring a place and drawing it brings a lot of pleasure and allows you to truly experience your environment on a deeper level.

Since launching my Youtube channel back in 2017 I have also gained a considerable amount of experience in using audio and visual equipment, learning to edit, write a script, tell a story, present myself on camera and get comfortable doing so. This hasn’t always been easy and still requires a lot of work but having done it for so many years I felt confident enough to know what I would be doing and how I wanted my course to be delivered.

Back in August 2022, I came up with an overview of the course scribbled in my notebook, wrote a loose timeline and set to work writing my curriculum. I wanted the bulk of the classes to be taught outside so I knew I had a short window of time to get these filmed before the season changed and winter set in. So during the last week of August, I scouted out the places I had in mind to film and over September and October when the weather looked fine I filmed over a few days my locational footage. Usually, I started with my sketches and timed exercises, followed by the B-roll of the place and lastly the timed sketch scenes. These are moving visual scenes with sound and a time limit which encourages the viewer to draw and be more immersed in the landscape than if they were just drawing from a photo.

The structure of the tuition is so good. The sketch walks are such a unique experience. You can walk the coastal paths, see the towns and explore the landscape along with Mel, then do the same scenes yourself in the timed sketch sessions. -Caroline

The curriculum covers a range of topics, including materials and equipment, inspiration from other artists’ sketchbooks, sketching techniques, creative layouts, and styles. It also includes practical advice and ideas for getting started sketching, helpful if things seem overwhelming, you don’t have a lot of time or you’re not sure where to start.

Once we’ve familiarised ourselves with the basics I take the participants on 3 sketch walks-all coastal places from around the Lizard peninsula- Polpeor, Poltesco and Porthleven. The subjects vary from historical Cornish buildings to churches and ruins, seascape and rugged cliffs, and fishing paraphernalia and I also share a couple of other spots which include my rough cuts for a ‘pilot’ I shot.

From the very first lesson, I was hooked. It is a resource that I will consult again and again and it has brought out a style in my sketching (thanks to speeding things up a bit) that I didn't know I had. -Debbie

A large part of the writing includes researching the history of the place so the viewer not only sees the subject but also hears a plotted history and the context of the place. I feel this adds to the overall picture and combined with the sights and sounds provides an immersive experience.

We came to the sketch walks and wow there was a lot of wonderful content here with Mel showing her approaches before timed drawing to follow along. This was a dynamite session I really loved it. It was like hanging out with Mel doing some sketching, marvellous. - Andy

During November I had a lightbulb idea to interview other artists who practice sketching on location and have these ‘chats’ available for the students to listen to. I started reaching out rather tentatively but to my surprise had some positive responses booking Nishant Jain and Koosje Koene in a matter of days. I then summoned up the courage to ask Liz Steele (a well-known urban sketcher in her field) so fired off an email amazingly she said yes within a day, so this was incredibly encouraging. I now have 6 artists sharing their sketchbook journeys and their struggles on the course. It’s great to have other voices alongside mine and hear a range of ideas from a variety of artists and these conversations are all in the bonus material section for students to listen to as they please.

Podcast Guests Sketchbooks L-R Koosje Koene, Liz Steele, Nathalia Velasquez, Matt Johnson, Nishant Jain, Emma Carlisle

This was one of my favorite podcasts (interview with Matt Johnson). I loved seeing the video of Matt at work. His mark making reminds me of watching David Hockney sketch in the landscape. -Carol

By December I had been working on and off the course for a few months in between other work commitments, but I found I was starting to procrastinate and needed to set a deadline for completion. Bear in mind I was not being paid for the hours I was putting in, and have chosen to use Teachable as my platform had already paid out a considerable amount to use their pro account. Time was of the essence, and because I know I work best under pressure, I devised a plan to put the course on pre-sale to start getting sales, and then publish the first unit in early January. The course would then be released over a period of 5 weeks- with a unit going live each week. This was probably the hardest and riskiest decision to make as I knew as soon as I would take the first sale I was committed to finishing the course which at the time of enrolment was only 40% completed.

However the model worked for me, I found the motivation due to people signing up encouraged me to get the work done.

I gave myself around 2 weeks to complete each unit, (filming and editing- writing had mostly been done) this was tight, and sometimes it meant creating up to 6 videos in as many days which didn’t leave room for mistakes or other work/life commitments, and to be honest, I should have declined any extra work in that period, but it showed me how much I could do if I disciplined myself and kept to the task. Knowing that this would just be for a short period of time also kept me going. My husband took on all the household chores during this time, which was an incredible support.

And so on January 9th, my course went live and over the space of 5 weeks, I was able to meet and teach a lovely bunch of enthusiastic students who were able to learn, share and sketch together.

I've just finished going through the course and wanted to say how much I enjoyed it! It's beautifully presented and I appreciated your attention to detail. It's an excellent introduction to sketching outside, I loved seeing your sketchbooks for inspiration and also learning about other artists. I loved the interviews with artists and your sketch walks. All in all, an excellent course! -Charmian

Teachable allows comments and discussion below each post/lesson, encouraging a community to develop if people want to engage. I also encourage students to share their work and there have been some wonderful sketchbook pages created some of which you can see below.

Student work -L-R Michael, Caroline, Johanne, Carol, Leslie, Debbie, Jennifer, Andy, Hilde

Overall, writing this course has been a truly joyful experience and has boosted my confidence in teaching and course creation. I would certainly like to create more courses, perhaps not as intense or as long as this one just yet (I have needed to take a little break) but definitely just as creative and immersive.

This class exceeded my expectations. I can recommend it to beginners who want to start a sketchbook practice as well as to more experienced artists. Everything was easy to understand. I learned strategies for working faster, new ways to organize my sketch kit for working on location, and I am excited about the results I can get by layering different types of materials. -Carol

If this has piqued your interest you can see for yourself by visiting the course page here. It is ‘live’ and is available now as a self-paced class, for anyone to enrol and get started with sketching on location.

Thanks for reading and I’ll speak to you again soon!

P.S Teachers -if you’re interested in what Teachable has to offer here is a coupon off your first year if you choose a Pro account.