# Secrets, Tips & Tricks to Finding Your Voice as an Artist - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/secrets-tips-and-tricks-to-finding-your-voice-as-an-artist/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Quick win · Rated 6 /10 # Secrets, Tips & Tricks to Finding Your Voice as an Artist By Gareth B. Davies · Updated August 2026 Marie-Noëlle Wurm · Artist, illustrator, HSP All levels · 39 min A short, personal course on quieting self-doubt through observation and a scrapbook method, light on technique but genuine. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fsecrets-tips-and-tricks-to-finding-your-voice-as-an-artist%2F1209375745) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## What it actually teaches This is not a drawing-technique class. There is no instruction on line quality, proportion, perspective, or rendering. Instead, the course is built around psychology and process: how to quiet the inner critic long enough to make work, and how to find personal subject matter once you do. The teacher, Marie-Noëlle Wurm, frames the whole thing around three "secrets": relearning how to see, understanding the relationship between practice volume and pressure, and keeping what she calls an "everything book," a scrapbook that mixes sketches with quotes, to-do lists, and anything else that defines the maker. The first secret asks viewers to slow down during ordinary moments, on a commute or a walk, and consciously notice what they find visually interesting, whether that is a texture, a shadow, or the way a child moves. The second reframes the 10,000-hour idea in personal terms: if you only draw once a year, that single drawing carries impossible weight, but if you draw constantly, any one attempt matters less, which lowers the emotional stakes. The third, the everything book, is presented as the most concrete tool in the class, a physical or digital collection that doubles as a way to figure out what makes a person's taste distinct from anyone else's. ## The exercise and its limits The class builds to a three-part exercise: write a list of things that genuinely interest you (books, science concepts, hobbies, anything), sketch quick visual thumbnails that could represent those interests, then pick one thumbnail and develop it into a finished drawing. The teacher demonstrates this with her own examples, turning a scientific idea (network theory) and a personal habit (foot care) into abstract sketches, and later expanding a bird reference photo and a concrete-texture study into two finished pieces, one figurative and one abstract. The demo sections are useful for showing that inspiration doesn't have to be literal. But they are also where the course's thinness shows. The time-lapse for the first finished drawing fails to record, so the teacher talks through a second drawing instead without addressing what was lost in the first. There is no real discussion of materials, mark-making choices, or why one abstraction reads better than another. The demos explain intent more than execution. ## Where it succeeds and where it doesn't The closing lesson, on what the teacher calls "paradoxical truths," is arguably the strongest section. It reads a well-known Ira Glass quote about the gap between taste and current skill, and argues that a nagging sense of "not good enough" is not always destructive. It can point to a specific weak spot, technique, composition, or confidence, worth addressing directly. This lands as a genuinely useful reframe rather than generic encouragement. At 39 minutes, the course covers a narrow but coherent idea well: self-doubt is common, volume of practice dilutes its weight, and personal interest is a legitimate and renewable source of subject matter. It succeeds as a mindset primer and a lightweight brainstorming method. It does not succeed as a skill-building course, and viewers expecting guidance on how to actually draw better will be disappointed. The teacher is upfront that this is a companion piece to her earlier class on drawing without fear, and that lineage shows: this one leans even further into the emotional side of art-making and further away from craft. The standout The three-part exercise that moves from a written list of personal interests to visual thumbnail brainstorming to a finished drawing gives a repeatable structure for generating original work from what already interests you. ## What you will learn - · How to slow down and consciously train your visual attention to notice texture, color, light, and shape - · How to build an 'everything book' that mixes sketches, quotes, lists, and ephemera as a source of personal inspiration - · A three-step process for turning a personal interest into a finished drawing, from written list to thumbnail brainstorm to final piece - · A reframe for the 10,000-hour idea: how volume of practice lowers the pressure on any single drawing - · How to read self-critical thoughts as useful signals rather than reasons to quit - · How to use personal reference photos and abstraction to turn an unrelated idea (like a science concept) into visual material Best for: Hobbyist and early-stage artists who feel blocked by self-doubt more than by a lack of technical knowledge. Skip it if: Anyone looking for instruction in drawing fundamentals, anatomy, composition, or medium-specific technique. Engaging Teacher Actionable Steps Helpful Examples Clarity of Instruction [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fsecrets-tips-and-tricks-to-finding-your-voice-as-an-artist%2F1209375745)