Well, after an epic 6-week adventure, my first run of SketchingNow Buildings has now finished.

It was an incredible journey on so many levels. I felt so privileged to have this way of sharing many tips in great detail and in a format designed to help people take their architecture sketching to the next level. It was unbelievably rewarding to see the development in everyone’s work over the course of the 6 week period.

I ended up putting way more content into the lessons than I had planned and I also gave many additional tips in the feedback sessions (each Feedback was an additional lesson in itself) but there was so many interesting points raised by the group as they worked through the exercises that I had to address them all!

Although I prefer sketching from real life, I had a number of indoor exercises using photos that were specifically chosen to best illustrate the key concepts so that people were better equipped when tackling sketching buildings in their own area.

There are special lessons that can be learned by comparing other people’s interpretation of the same subject which can only be done via photos in an online course.

Seeing the variety of buildings sketched each week was exciting – from Norway to Chile and many countries in between – and adding a real richness to the classroom.

And oh! I have to mention how personally exciting it was to share my Italian adventures with the class and in particular, the most challenging complex building demonstration I have done to date.

Do I need to mention that I get excited every time I mention Palladio? Actually, the course ended up with two complex Palladio demonstrations – Lesson 3’s Loggia del Capitaniata and a bonus video of Palazzo Chiericati (the opening image).

But the best part of all was getting the feedback at the end. Numerous people said ‘the course exceeded my expectations’ and ‘I am no longer afraid to sketch buildings as I now have a system to follow’.

There were also a few people who mentioned that they are much more confident to sketch in public. This was an added bonus as I wasn’t specifically addressing this in the course. It proves that having a strategy prepared for how you are going to draw does indeed take away a lot of the uncertainty when sketching on location.

As the course ended up being much richer in content than I intended, I am in the process of reviewing the best way to re-offer it. However, it will be available at some stage in 2017. If you would like to receive updates and the first notification when it does become available, please sign up for my monthly newsletter below.

And finally, a huge thank you if you enrolled and took an active part in the course. What an awesome group you were and an absolute honour to teach. I am seriously missing you all!