Written by I’m Koosje Koene and I live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where I was born and raised. I am an artist, an illustrator and an art teacher – not in that particular order. I am obsessed with drawing and share my work on my website, I blog about art and the process of making art, and I teach online courses. I am also the co-founder of Sketchbook Skool, which offers video based online courses and a fantastic community of artists from all around the globe, of all levels and skills.
This started out as a creative project because Danny Gregory and I wanted to learn from so many other artists, but they didn’t offer any courses. That’s why we created our first six-week course two years ago, in which each week a different artist teaches a class; showing us around in their studio, sharing sketchbook pages and inspiration, giving us a peek over the shoulder when making art, giving us a taste of their lives as an artist and sharing stories and personal insights.
Turned out we weren’t the only ones who felt the need for online classes like these, because many people signed up for that first course and now our global community is over 10000 people and still growing. We currently have 29 artists in our Fakulty and 8 Kourses; and making more!
As you can imagine, that keeps me quite busy these days. Of the many things I do, I’ll pick one of my obsessions to share here: I am quite a fanatic about food and cooking. That’s probably an understatement: Because of my love for food and cooking, I have even worked as a chef for a while, in a small restaurant where we served breakfast, lunch, and early dinners. And I also dabbled around, doing catering jobs for small parties and productions.
Although it was a fantastic experience and I learned a lot, it wasn’t really for me. It was back breaking – almost literally. During that time I was following my passions and trying to find the ‘sweet spot’ in which I was able to do what I love and to bring some food to the table as well.. again – quite literally in this case. I found out that I need to keep the love for cooking as a hobby.
So now, I am a very happy home chef, and I really enjoy creating new recipes, and creating healthy and delicious food. And it combines very well with my other obsession: drawing. How to document my favorite recipes better than illustrating them? Doing so in my sketchbooks, I keep track of my experiments in the kitchen, and explore new ways of explaining things visually on my pages. And sometimes I even get to do it as a commission assignment.
Luckily, I am not the only one with this love for foodie-art. And I discovered there are many people who would like to draw food, or who would love to make a recipe book with their family recipes or favorite recipes in it – illustrated! So I offer a workshop that’s all about drawing food and illustrating recipes and it’s called ‘Draw It Like It’s Hot!’
For this Doodlewash post, I picked some foodie-art I made using watercolors, but I’ll use anything that’s at hand. A simple pencil, a bic-pen or any kind of ink will do. But I do like the effect of watercolors combined with black ink lines, or using a bright watercolor wash as a background for a more elaborate colour pencil drawing. You can buy my recipe book ‘Food Ink’, with 30 delicious illustrated recipes in it here, or here if you live in Europe. Follow me with the links below and don’t miss out on my weekly video tips on Draw Tip Tuesday!
Koosje Koene
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wow!!
Thanks!!
Koosje, it’s great to read about you, your art, and Sketchbook Skool! I love all of your fruit and veg sketches!
Thank you Jessica!
Koosje, I love your work! One of you YouTube videos had a huge impact on me when I first made my creative resolution. Thanks for sharing so much of what you do and helping others. 😀
That’s so wonderful, Eileen!
Fabulous!! Koosje you have a new follower on Instagram and Facebook. Thank you for sharing this Charlie.
Yay, thanks for following!
Thanks so much Susan! Yay to the follows!
New friend! Like!
Me likey!
Reblogged this on Mysiteexists.
Beautiful, inspirational work! Thanks for sharing. 💛
Thank you, Laura
Oh Charlie! LOVE all of this! Thanks for sharing Koosje! How do you say that name by the way? It is very unique to me? 🙂 I can’t wait to spend time exploring all your pages and videos!!!
So thrilled you liked this feature, Jodi! And I think you just missed her as she was responding. Now you’re stuck with me, who just guesses at things, but my guess for a phonetic pronunciation would be ‘Kosha’! 😊
Hi thank you Jodi, yes Charlie is right about the pronounciation! It’s a typical Dutch name.
Thanks Koosje! Wasn’t sure if I had that right… never heard it pronounced! Hehe
Your art is wonderful Koosje, thanks so much for sharing your beautiful art. Thank you Charlie.
Thanks Sharon! So glad you enjoyed Koosje’s feature! 😃
Beautiful art, the colored pencils on watercolor is fantastic to see. Love the story of cooking merging with art, brilliant! Thank you for sharing such inspiring work.
So pleased you liked this feature! Thanks Haunani! 😃
Delicious! (K)
Don’t know how I could have missed this post – fantastic work!
Koosje, your work is amazing! I love the way you bring the background to the foreground with a wash of color over the subjects in your painting.
Strong! Love this style!
robert
[…] to enroll in classes and become part of the online community of artists that he cofounded with Koosje Koene, called Sketchbook Skool. I have been drawing every day […]
[…] joining Sketchbook Skool online. It is a wonderful site started by Danny Gregory and former Koosje Koene (a former Guest artist on Doodlewash), after taking a 6-week course I was hooked and now my sketchbook is attached to my hip. When […]