why you should learn to draw with me

choosing to make art right now is the best way to spite the systems trying to keep us down

As an art educator in this moment, I have to reckon with the fact that the very thing I am trying to do for this world is being sold by the powers that be as obsolete. Why would someone want to learn how to draw or keep a little sketchbook of their art when anyone can just generate anything with abandon?

a meme I found mocking the power needs of AI data centers

I know if you are reading this newsletter you fundamentally don’t believe that about art. You are someone who values craft, the attentiveness creativity requires, the tender feeling of discovery when you make something with your own body. You believe that the ‘prompt-it-and-push-it’ mentality is a kill switch for our intuition. You know it’s misguided and vulgar to say that the arts, creativity, and the process of making doesn’t matter anymore — of course it does! That’s what gives life depth, meaning, richness.

Creative practices and magic rabbit holes [1] engage our human curiosity and feed our minds. If we give all of this up to chatbots we are going to be hungry and lonely. Good creative feedback comes from community and connection with other people. Art makes us feel full because it requires work. A home cooked meal tastes better than frozen-ready-mades because they require work. Our labor of creation is what makes life delicious. All of these are things the tech bros are trying to sell us on giving up for a lifetime of subscriptions and attention traps. If you aren’t familiar with my thoughts on ai sobriety, you can read them here.

drawing in my sketchbook while sitting on a rock near Castle Lake in the Shasta/ Trinity National Forest

Today, I want to share answers to a few of the common questions I’ve been getting about my Sketchbook Class and help you feel a bit more confident signing up if you’ve been on the fence:

Is this class actually for beginners?!

Goodness yes, it is definitely for beginners. It’s actually an expanded and revised version of a class I taught in person last spring that was called “Getting Started with Drawing — THE BASICS.” I learned pretty quickly though that not everyone in class was needing the basics. Some were, of course, but a lot of folks coming in were at different levels, switching mediums, looking for encouragement, feedback, and guidance to keep going. This is why I rewrote it to include self-compassion!

In the class I will demo the absolute basic building blocks of drawing, things like composition, shape, value, how to see and measure objects from life. The assignments will be framed to support artists just coming back to the craft for the first time since they were kids and artists who are a little further along, but wanna deepen into drawing.

If you want to build a new rhythm for your drawings and to brush up on skill, this is the class for you. If you just want feedback on your practice, it’s also the class for you.

The time doesn’t work for me, is it being recorded?

Yes! Class recordings will go out the Monday after each class session. With the price of the class, you also get access to an exclusive Discord channel where you can get asynchronous feedback, chat with other students, find support between the sessions.

I am not planning to offer this class as a downloadable recording. For now, I only plan to teach it live. The price is currently $140, but this is the last time I’ll be offering a live, multi-week class for less than $200.

Students who sign up for my online classes also get exclusive pricing on tutoring after the class ends. So if you can’t attend any of the live classes, you’ll be able to watch the recordings and book a time with me after to look at your work and get direct feedback when it works for you.

What is the exact result I will get from this class?

You’ll leave class with an understanding of how to use drawing materials to define value, shape, and spot from life. You’ll have the simple basics on how to draw from nature, and how to maintain a drawing practice over time by setting clear intentions to come back to when you fall off.

This isn’t a class where we are all going to draw the same thing, and you follow along with my ideas step-by-step. (like you would at a sip n sketch/pinots palette kinda deal) I don’t like to teach in that way!

While I’ll be demoing plenty of techniques you’ll be able to rewatch later and copy each step if you want, my goal is to help you understand the basics of how to draw while applying them to your interests and art style. I want you to draw like you, not copy me. My goal is always to help my students develop independent interests and techniques.

No two people who take my class will leave drawing the exact same way, because drawing is handwriting for images. My version and your version will never look totally alike. I’ll just show you how to shape the letters for legibility.

I saw there are going to be critiques and that makes me nervous!

Critiques can feel super vulnerable and scary but I am teaching the concept of self-compassion alongside the specific techniques of drawing for this reason. Self-Compassion is a term coined by Psychologist Dr. Kristen Neff and it is a practice of extending kindness to yourself when dealing with uncertainty and failure - two big things that starting to draw as an adult can bring up!

In my 14 years of teaching, too often students are working with a lack of safety or deep feelings of discomfort from past trusted adults discouraging their art. I had plenty of terrible experiences in Art School with critiques. Rooting in my own experiences and how they made me feel a lack of safety, I am going to hold these spaces in a way that will encourage encourage your creative flourishing.

Self-compassion is the tool we’ll use to tend warmly to our selves when soft struggles arise in our work. When we are new at something, intense feelings will arise and that is okay! The goal is to have a place to land with those feelings and be open to what our art can teach us.

Have another question about Sketchbook Class? email me.

The last thing I have for you is two videos to watch!

The first, I posted yesterday about why artists need to stop optimizing their art for social media platforms. Enshittification is here, it’s real, and we need to survive instead of burning out.

Here are a few quotes from the script that I think will really resonate:

“If you want to make good Human art and writing, you need to act like a gardener and simultaneously tend to what you wanna grow, while also tending to the soil. As artists, our soil is full of all the things we have to let compost and go fallow. Quality human art needs to plan for cycles that let us follow weird tangents, research dream symbolism, hold safe space for experimentation and life long learning. We need dirt full of things we never show anyone. Quality human art needs to get us to spend more time away from harmful tech tools, and more time quietly with ourselves. We have to look at the abundance of entertainment and convenience in our culture and say NO, I’d rather do the hard thing. I would rather get the reward from trying and honing a craft rather than being instantly satisfied. “

“I’ll tell you from experience that following and chasing results and Key Performance Indicators in my own art burned me out. And each time I find myself looking at stats, I am encouraged to follow optimization strategies that serve the platforms, not my work. If anything, they stop me from doing the painting and writing I need to be doing”

“This year I wrote a manifesto instead of resolutions and magic over metrics was the first line. Magic comes from spending time alone with your intuition and creative craft. I don’t have the youtube studio app on my phone anymore, I ignore what this platform wants from me, and I’ve doubled down into connecting to my physical body, my inner knowing, and what these books have done to shape my development as an artist since 2009”

The second video is from two years ago where the seed of the idea of sketchbooking and self compassion emerged from:

https://melmitchelljackson.com/blog/2026/3/7/how-my-sketchbook-is-helping-me-be-nicer-to-myself

“The sketchbook became my big self-compassion project. It felt like a way to be mindful of what kinds of subject matter I’m most attracted to, where I could play like a little kid, and I could begin to befriend that mean inner critic”

“In art school the focus was on prestige. Egos would drive the conversation in critiques. Yet critique was part of our grades and often found myself needing to defend my choices to work representationally or dare to use photo references”

“Lack of self trust and brutal inner criticism meant I had to plan out everything I could make digitally first. Using the undo button and Photoshop to plan out each work before starting because I was scared to fail”

I hope you’ll enjoy these over your weekend, or just listen to me ramble as your buddy while you do work on a creative project or just do your laundry or dishes.

Until next time, stay creative and find your own way to persistently bloom!

-Mel

[1] i love a wikipedia rabbit hole, a long exploration of frog song, understanding why that word means what it does in Spanish, or other things that drive your work and brighten your life, follow them!