 Hello and welcome to my YouTube channel. My name is Sandy Olock. We haven't met yet. Glad you're here I am going to be doing an alcohol marker drawing with colored pencil details in it And that is because I have been working with these two mediums for weeks now trying to get some classes ready And they are ready So the first two minutes or so of the next portion of the video are gonna be about the classes You'll get a sneak peek into that a little bit about how it's gonna work And in the rest of the video, I'll be working on a drawing While I tell you about what a children's illustrator my dad and my business coach have in common Let's get started The drawing on nature series that just started begins with animals and this new category of classes aims to teach How to create realism in your art this first group of courses are in alcohol markers with pencil details on top They're all animals cute baby ones. They're a level four classes So you should have some good solid level threes under your belt and feel comfortable there Each drawing is going to be from a photo and I even provide you with sketches and notes about drawing some of the features You're permitted to trace. I even teach you five different ways to trace an image So no shade if you need to do that You can also practice your sketching skills to draw it freehand if you want Each lesson is taught in real time the voiceover continues throughout each no musical breaks even if you beg for one All of the marker swapping time is cut out So you don't have to sit there and wait for me to find a pen So it's solid learning time and the Copic colors are all on screen for you this time in these classes Now it might be confusing when I refer to these classes in the plural because you're probably used to me releasing Just one course at a time with five to ten lessons in it This one was planned as one but in the story ahead you'll hear how that changed It's still going to be offered as one big class with everything in it plus a bonus lesson That isn't available anywhere else for a really nice discount But you can choose your own adventure Pick out just a couple of these drawings you want to learn separately. You can take a few or a bunch You can take two a year. You can do it any way you want. It's up to you as Usual I'm going to offer steep discounts at the first launch. So go check out the pricing right away Plus in this series if you take two of the single lesson courses And then you think well, I wish I had taken all 10 Well, just email me and after you sign up for the full enchilada I'll refund the first two course fees that you paid So you won't be out anything by trying out a couple before deciding if drawing this way is up your alley Or if it's too hard or too easy or whatever it is you end up thinking about it Patrons in the five dollar and up categories are going to be able to get today's pricing on the big enchilada class for a year All they have to do is email me once they have saved up And I will make the arrangements to get them that class at this current price So if you have some budgeting to arrange becoming a patron might well pay off for you Everything in this series is on one page over on the website, which is linked down below The patron page is linked down below as well So check them out get yourself a nice big discount to snag these classes right away Now for story time First character is Ian Falconer Illustrator at the New Yorker Children's writer and illustrator and he just died on March 7th The world is poorer for the loss of him if you're familiar with the Olivia series Falconer wrote about a piglet with an independent streak There's one book called Olivia and the fairy princess which inspired this drawing It's about Olivia kind of wanting to be a fairy princess But not one who wears a pink tutu just like everyone else She's kind of emo and she doesn't really want to be like the rest of the world I gotta love that right Well Ian died and when I read about his passing I found out he was the same age as my dad when he died far too young at 63 But of course that got me thinking about dad my second character in this story His birthday is just a few days shy of my own birthday later this month and Thinking about making that Boston cream pie that I always still make for our celebration Just like we had all throughout my childhood best cake ever Well dad is who I got my playful streak from he always had a joke ready Love to tell silly stories and never took anything seriously much to mom's chagrin She is ever so practical in every step of life Enough to be kind of stifling sometimes and the two of them both live in my head So on one day, I'm on the crazy wild side doing all kinds of artistic nonsense and being goofy And then I leap to seriously planning out lessons that follow a structure and build on skills and Sometimes I feel like there's just two completely different people living inside my head The third character in my story is my business coach. He's an elderly gentleman who lives in the Midwest He's retired. He used to own a company that made widgets like little parts for machines Nothing like what I do But he is retired and he wanted to start finding ways to help small business owners and mentor them and We had a mutual friend and that friend hooked us up So I've now had this wonderful guy in my life and he is a complete and total data nerd Oh my gosh, I love him. He loves reading my profit and loss statements He loves advising me on things that he sees that are working and not working He notices trends that I'm too busy to stop and take notice of like all of a sudden an older class gets a whole bunch of new Students, which means somebody talked about it online and he goes to try to find out if that person exists And if so then we offer them like a freebie in order to thank them for doing such things So I love this man. He is just wonderful But the thing that he does the most that I really really love is Competitor analysis. He lives for this stuff He likes to go out and find who the closest competitors are for a business and in my case He registers for their classes. He watches them Takes notes about how good they are how much fluff they keep in their videos like marker hunting and pecking Whether they waste a lot of time on remedial Concepts when they're teaching something at a level four or five Because a lot of that he's like, well, that's wasted time that that person at that level shouldn't need all that stuff So, you know, he's he's comparing how many minutes are spent on what he's just crazy this way I would never have the patience or even the emotional distance to do this But he is brutally honest with me about his assessments Fortunately, he's also very much like my dad in his temperament. He's very hilarious So the brutal truth comes through with a spoon of sugar, thankfully But he is also deadly Practical which appeals to the mom characteristics that I have in my head as well So all of this brings me to the last couple weeks working on these animal classes. I had it planned out I started drawing and I was just in my happy place I wasn't paying any attention to how long the drawings were taking or Bothering to set my mind on to okay, how am I gonna set this up? What will my pricing be none of that and I was shocked when I choked my computer with over seven hours worth of footage That's several times more than my average class, which would mean I was gonna have to charge a bit more for it And I didn't have any idea how much so that's when I brought in the coach And he went out to do the comparative work What he found was that for somebody who teaches at my level the kinds of drawings. These are no backgrounds They're just an animal itself just an individual image with the amount of information imparted in each lesson He found that other people teach one image at a time for get this 40 to 45 bucks and I literally gasped when I read his email. No way if I kept 10 drawings together That would be $400 and no one is foolish enough to pay me that that is not happening We went round and round and round I tell him classes have to be affordable or nobody's gonna sign up He reminds me that if my peers are charging more I'm doing my own skills in my business a disservice With my pricing and if I can't meet my monthly bills because of it that I won't be around to keep teaching anybody anything So fortunately he is all up in my business and he asks me really good questions, too And he asked a few that I had never really considered when we were talking about this Why do I think that all my classes have to have five or ten lessons? Is that magic just because I'd done it all those years in other classes? Why did that have to be the model for everything? Well, I had no answer to that Just because is not a plausible reason when you're talking about business So we talked through offering classes individually instead What would that mean for how the teaching would go and lessons would have to stand on their own rather than building on earlier lessons Like I normally do and then we got to the discussion of the price which honestly I still did not feel okay with $40 each just feels bunkers to me so I lowered that and Don't tell him. I put them on a steep sale for these first few weeks of the launch That made my stomach feel a little less queasy and Then the offer to refund your first two animal classes if you opt in later to take the full enchilada Also feels better. So nobody feels stuck if they just weren't sure about what they wanted to learn and if they were up for it So I did compromise with my coach despite the fact that he has zero stake in my business I do not have to listen to him But I do since he is very wise very knowledgeable and He's very good at giving me a kick in the butt that can also make me laugh While my mom's side is very happy with the practicality of the advice that I'm getting My my mom actually worries about me surviving as an independent artist. Why do you want to do this? And my dad though would be thrilled to know that this year this summer I am gonna be celebrating my 10th anniversary in business doing what I love and getting to be silly. Oh And did I mention that when pigs fly was one of my dad's corny phrases that he used a lot? He would have loved reading me Ian Falconer's sassy books if they had been around when I was little He didn't start writing till the year 2000 These stories encourage kids who are a little different and I'm still a big kid Who is well different and yes, I don't have kids But I still my children's books not just for the pictures, but for the stories in them So I can recommend checking out the Olivia books and read them to the littles in your life and encourage them to be who they are Alrighty, I hope you enjoyed storytime and my piglet drawing Be sure to check out the link for the classes in the doobly-doo because I would love to help you learn how to draw realistic furry animals and Then be sure to come back on Thursday. My schedule is a little different this week My stampers are going to be especially excited about the next video So make sure you're subscribed and you click on the bell and tell YouTube to notify you of all videos not personalized All videos is the button you want so you don't miss out on what is coming And I will see you on Thursday just a couple days away. Go out and create something every day