pronounced "Kōsha”
I’m an artist and creative entrepreneur living in the Netherlands. I love drawing and I do it every day. On this website, I hope to inspire you to develop a drawing practice too, because it can make you feel good.
Photo by Rick Keus
Maybe sometimes when you want to draw, you don't know what to draw.
When drawing from observation, whatever catches your eye is interesting enough to start drawing it. And it's actually the other way around: as soon as you start drawing something, it becomes interesting.
About a year ago, I couldn't quite imagine that I would be teaching workshops to groups of people in person. It's happening and you can join!
Watercolor is such a versatile medium. It seems hard to control, but then when you play a lot with it, you'll get to know the material and its behavior better. You'll get more confident using it in your sketchbook.
Today I am letting you flip though my latest sketchbook.
I love flipping through other people's sketchbooks, and this is what I want for my upcoming book: it should feel like you're going through one of my sketchbooks.
Making a watercolor background can help to get over the fear of the blank page. You can do a bunch of washes on random pages in your sketchbook, to surprise or challenge yourself.
Whenever things seem to become dull or boring, I’ll switch up tools and techniques to give myself variety and challenges. Here's an example of a small and accessible challenge for your sketchbook: I call it "drawing snippets", or a "sketch collage".
Today I am showing you the sketchbook pages I filled when I was in Paris a week ago. Going through these travel sketchbook pages brings me right back there! Come with!
In today's video, I am showing you the process of a digital illustration, done in Procreate on the iPad.
I can’t tell you nor advise you on what pen to use - it's too personal of a choice. But in today's video, I will show you one of my favorite pens, and how I use it in my sketchbook.
You can’t just sit around and wait for an idea to come to you. Picasso said it well: “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
But the work doesn’t need to feel like “work” - make it as effortless and fun as you can, so you can dive right into the creative flow.
I love using brushpens.
It takes a bit of practicing to draw with a brushpen, so today, let's play with brush, ink and water.
I am not talking about brush markers, which are also great. I am talking about pens that are filled with ink like a fountain pen, but instead of a nib, they have a brush.
I am in the process of writing and publishing a book about drawing: "Life is Better When You Draw (it)".
The core message of the book is how much pure joy drawing brings me, and that you can incorporate that joy into your daily life too.
Today I'd like to show you a sketchbook I filled in November and December last year. It's filled to the brim with daily stuff, adventures, mundane and exciting... and all of it is part of my illustrated story.
If we would all give just one euro, together we could raise €31100 to donate to UNHCR for medical care, nutrition and accommodation for refugees and people in Ukraine.
When you want to capture a bigger scene than for example the mug of coffee in front of you, you might feel overwhelmed by all the information - where to start and how to translate all of it onto your page?
Dedicating a sketchbook to a certain topic or theme could be a great way to give yourself an extra nudge or push or motivation, but it could also become kind of a chore when you isolate that one particular thing in one sketchbook. When you keep a bunch of sketchbooks for several challenges or projects, then that might solve that problem.
This is part 2 in the three-parts series about capturing a bigger scene.
Where do you start, how do you draw a scene that feels kind of overwhelming?
On my Patreon Page, patrons voted for the next Draw Tip Tuesday subject. The option that got the most votes: drawing a Bigger Scene.
There are many ways to do this, so I decided to do this in a three-part series. Today: Part 1.
Today I am showing you a Sketchbook from the archives.
Once I discovered the sketchbook habit (as in, keeping a sketchbook as a visual journal), a lot of things changed for me as an artist.
In last Tuesday’s video I use the continuous line technique; red for the foreground and blue for the background. It made me think of one summer a few years ago, I took this onliner(s) technique a little further.
