# Find Your Creative Style! Sketching to Develop Your Aesthetic - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/find-your-creative-style-sketching-to-develop-your-aesthetic/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Solid intro · Rated 7 /10 # Find Your Creative Style! Sketching to Develop Your Aesthetic Updated September 2026 Amandine Thomas · Award-winning illustrator All levels · 64 min A working illustrator maps how her personal style emerged from sketchbooks, giving a concrete, repeatable process rather than vague inspiration. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Ffind-your-creative-style-sketching-to-develop-your-aesthetic%2F341963710) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## A process, not a formula Amandine Thomas builds this class around a simple premise: style is not chosen, it is noticed. Rather than handing viewers a checklist of "how to find your aesthetic," she treats the sketchbook as a research tool, and the class walks through how to use it as one. The first half covers practical groundwork: assembling a toolbox through trial and error (she settles on a nib, watercolor, and fine liners after years of testing), picking a subject using quick self-directed questions, and thinking through composition without invoking intimidating rules about symmetry or depth. The second half turns reflective, asking viewers to look back across their own sketches for repeating choices, in tools, color, or framing, that might already be their voice waiting to be recognized. The structural backbone is three timed sketching exercises, two minutes, ten minutes, and twenty minutes, all of the same subject. This is a smart design choice. Rather than treating each sketch as an isolated demo, the repetition across time constraints shows how the same tree looks different depending on how much room there is to think, and it gives viewers a built-in before-and-after to study once they try it themselves. The two-minute sketch, done under a strict timer, forces spontaneous line work; the twenty-minute version adds layered watercolor, palette planning, and revision, with instruction on when to stop before overworking a piece. ## Where it earns its runtime, and where it thins out The most useful material is procedural rather than aesthetic. The advice to build a sketch by jumping between sections, foliage, then bark, then a branch, rather than finishing one area at a time, is a concrete habit anyone can apply immediately, and the reasoning behind it (an interrupted sketch still reads as complete) is the kind of detail that separates a working artist's advice from generic encouragement. Similarly, the closing lesson's prompts for translating sketchbook habits into illustration work, unusual tool use, material affinities, framing tendencies, color repetition, give viewers actual questions to interrogate their own pages with, rather than abstract instructions to "find their voice." The class is honest about its limits. It does not teach anatomy, perspective, or rendering technique, and a viewer with no drawing foundation will likely find the timed scenarios frustrating rather than clarifying. Thomas acknowledges this directly and points elsewhere for a warm-up. The tradeoff is that everyone who does have basic sketching comfort gets a genuinely personal, specific account of how one illustrator's habits solidified into a recognizable style, down to the year she started sketchbooking at fifteen and the accidental discovery of tracing paper that later became central to her published work. At 64 minutes, the class does not overstay its welcome, but the second half leans more on personal anecdote than on additional technique, which means the practical density is front-loaded. Viewers who already sketch semi-regularly and want language and structure for a process they are sensing but haven't named will get the most value here. The standout The 'big picture, jump around' sketching approach, working on multiple parts of a drawing at once so an interrupted sketch still reads as complete, is a specific, transferable habit rather than generic encouragement. ## What you will learn - · How to assemble a personal sketching toolbox by trial and error rather than buying everything at once - · A method for choosing a subject fast using 'what caught your eye' prompts to beat blank-page paralysis - · How to compose a sketch around one focal element instead of trying to draw everything in frame - · Three timed sketching approaches (two, ten, and twenty minutes) for different real-world time constraints - · How to review a sketchbook retrospectively to spot recurring tools, colors, and compositional habits - · A set of prompts for translating sketchbook discoveries into a consistent illustration style Best for: Illustrators and hobbyist artists who already draw somewhat regularly and want a structured way to notice and consolidate the style that is already emerging in their own work. Skip it if: Absolute beginners looking for foundational drawing instruction (anatomy, perspective, line control), since the class assumes basic sketching ability and points elsewhere for warm-up exercises. Engaging Teacher Clarity of Instruction Actionable Steps Helpful Examples [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Ffind-your-creative-style-sketching-to-develop-your-aesthetic%2F341963710)