Greeting cards

So my Sketchbook Skool course officially ends this weekend. Though, I can still access the course material whenever I want. There is one assignment left for me to do, a general birthday card. Maybe I will get it done today. I've already done a card from an older drawing in one of my sketchbooks, a thank you card, did a funny snowman drawing, a Valentine's Day card and a card with a peace dove theme.

During the course we got a lot of information about what goes into creating greeting cards and were shown lots of examples. There were demos, but I would have loved to see a bit more of those. In the second week we got realistic design briefs that we were supposed to follow with our greeting card illustrations. There was also given some interesting info in two live streams, that are now available as videos, where Salli answered questions from the participants. And we got some nice gifts. What wasn't provided much is individual feedback.

The biggest take-away for me was being given the license and inspiration to illustrate something and realizing that I may not be so bad at it. It's something I haven't done so far, except for a simple flower card for Mother's Day. I am not totally new to the design process, e. g. having designed my own website. Still, this topic was something new and I am happy about how I managed.

Here's the thank you card I designed:

Sketchbook Skool

Sketchbook Skool (SBS) is an online art school that specializes in courses about drawing and painting in sketchbooks. It's based in New York and Amsterdam and the teachers are from all over the world. Often you have more than one teacher in one course. Most courses (or kourses as they say) take five to six weeks, but there are shorter ones, too.

I got aware of them quite some time ago and registered there not so long ago, but haven't taken a course with them so far. The courses are not really cheap - compared to say Craftsy. Still they have enthusiastic participants who have taken several courses. I have watched videos on their Youtube channel, followed their blog and seen what their students do at Facebook groups and I like their over-all approach of sketching in sketchbooks and being loose while still teaching about techniques that help you improve. One important reason I haven't taken part so far is that often watercolour is used, which I don't use, and with prices being quite high I don't want to lose a week's worth of course material because they teach something I don't want to use.

Finally, I have enrolled in a klass. It's shorter and cheaper than most of them and you can use whatever tools you prefer. I thought it may be ideal to try SBS out. It's about making greeting cards and taught by Salli Swindell who has designed greeting cards for major greeting card manufacturers. I'm not necessarily planning to design greeting cards later, but I hope to learn a good deal about designing and illustration, about the process that is behind it.

Klass starts tomorrow and I am really curious what it will be like.