‘No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.’ — Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Through the Looking-Glass)
A year ago I started a new adventure: I gathered my courage and started publishing online on this Substack site. The Sketch Club was born in reality, though, a bit earlier than this Substack (back at the beginning of the Pandemic, when I organised a series of sketch events with my colleagues), but it was this platform that truly allowed me to share my project with a wider audience in a format that I was willing to pursue: writing.
I am an architect and urban designer by background - that is my career, my job. But my passion goes beyond architecture and design: at the (not-so-)bottom of my soul, I am an artist. Or at least, I pursue the artist’s way: I need to continuously observe the world and create to understand it. Art, creativity, and making are to me more than just self-expression, they are mostly a way to understand and make sense of this world, of the Universe. Art to me is almost like Science.
Connecting with creative people and communities that love drawing has been my last year endeavour. Some time ago I felt the need to draw and sketch more, and to connect with and share this creative journey with others. This is where The Sketch Club is coming from. It has been an interesting year of both drawing and writing. It has been wonderful to start connecting with this creative community in and outside of Substack. And I have learned so much through the process of publishing weekly (I’ll publish a post about this soon).
Nevertheless, The Sketch Club has only just started. I am committed to continuing publishing weekly for the next year and I am introducing new and more personal content with the ‘Kiwi Chronicles’. It is somehow special that the anniversary of The Sketch Club coincides with the beginning of my new adventure in New Zealand and I would like to share this experience and journey with all of you.
My intention is to continue sharing all this for free, allowing comments and connection, but to reward the support of paid subscribers at the same time. As a free subscriber, you can access and read all the posts. However, it is my intention to take The Sketch Club to the next level in terms of the quality of content. I am extremely grateful for the support that paid subscribers have already shown mainly as a donation (they are a small group but a growing one!) that is why I am going to set up some paywalls on very personal content so that paid subscribers get so much more extra for their kind support.
These are the different ways you can support The Sketch Club and my work:
If you’d like to unlock the extra content (a closer view of my personal sketchbook and projects) you can upgrade to paid subscriptions here on this link. To celebrate the anniversary, I am sharing a special offer for the rest of the birthday month with paid subscriptions at a 20% discount for the next year:
You can also support me by buying me a coffee (they are getting quite expensive these days!).
You can always support by spreading the love and sharing The Sketch Club with others 💛
In any case, thanks so, so much for reading and for being here weekly! That is the biggest gift of all.
✏️✨
Happy birthday to The Sketch Club, and to many, many more!
Take care and happy sketching!
Ana
Mozel and congrats on one year.
if anyone is interested I'm doing a HANDs drawing workshop based on timed interval training Saturday 2/18 online at 6pm PST - if anyone wants to join ticking info is right here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-drawing-workshop-lets-draw-hands-tickets-543332501137?utm_source=eventbrite&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=post_publish&utm_content=shortLinkNewEmail
Again congrats on one year! here's to Ten More, Hezzah!