Every year the ‘Top 9’ posts of Instagram make the rounds.

My 19k+ followers have liked and commented all year round. Collectively my posts got over 55k likes (Wow. Thank you, all :).
I’m happy that I could spread some joy, cause some smiles and maybe help some of you on their own sketching journey, especially during a strange and difficult year like this.

In this post I will go through my Instagram Top 9 to reflect a bit on my 2020 (as I did in 2019 and 2018, too).

The biggest theme in the most popular posts this year was definitely ‘people’ (ok, and a couple of cats). My Little People show up in most of the popular posts. And that’s no surprise… sketching people can be difficult, but it’s also fun, rewarding a super effective and versatile tool for every sketchnoter or visual thinker. So let’s dive into the individual posts.

Little People brainstorm

I love drawing people. Especially little stick figures that have lots of personality and expression while being simple to draw.
This image was the preparatory visual brainstorm of figures to include in my first ‘Little People’ printable PDF. It contains100 basic actions and postures to practice and play with.
The PDF is also available in German and French.

Pragmatic Sketching Masterclass

2020 was the year of taking some of my face-2-face workshops online and to develop a couple of new formats as well.
My favourite was the ‘Pragmatic Sketching Masterclass’ series that I ran in October. It was intense and fun and it felt like teaching the essence of what I have learned about sketching over the last 20+ years.
I’ll run a similar format in 2021 and there’s a waitlist if you are interested to join.

Sketching people for UX storytelling

I was happy to be invited to guest lecture at a few (online) events and meet-ups this year, teaching sketching and visual thinking skills to all kinds of groups – UX designers, product managers, marketeers, teachers, public administration staff, doctors and scientists. And although the topics they need to visualise are varied, the basic principles for visualising, structuring and sense making can be applied to all of them.

Little People Ad

Making and selling my own products also means that I need to tell people about them and explain what they are good for (I think, it’s called marketing… :D).
This year I experimented with simple illustrated stories that explain my products in a few slides.
This one talks about the ‘Little People’ Basics PDF, but I also made similar explanations for my Yoganotes book and my Sanskrit terms illustrations.

The Creative Cycle

This little ‘infographic’ was inspired by a Tweet by Jessica Hische and as we all know this vicious cycle as creatives, I wanted to illustrate the 6 stages.
Drawing people, their actions and emotions is a fantastic tool to illustrate most processes in a relatable way. We also practiced this at the Copenhagen Vizthink meet-up in May that I had the pleasure to be a guest at (there are lots of examples to peruse in my blogpost).

Dolly Parton Challenge

I’m not a big partaker in ‘challenges’ but when I saw the #dollypartonchallenge do the rounds on the internet, I thought it was a fun exercise to tray and express – again – in the simplest way possible and let my Little People do the modelling :)

Draw your (Yoga-)Avatar

A little progress shot from the second e-book / printable I designed and released in 2020.
’Draw your Yoga Avatar’ shows you how to create a simple but sweet self-portrait (in a yoga posture… but it works great without any yoga context as well ;).
It contains step-by-step instructions plus tons of reference material for facial features, hairstyles, clothes and accessories.
Das PDF gibt es auch auf Deutsch.

Yin&Yang Cats

I first made a version of this drawing, when someone asked me to sign a poster with a drawing of their two cats, one white and one black. When playing around with the shapes it made me think of the yin and yang sign. I continued trying to sketch the ‘perfect’ yin&yang-style curled-up cat bundle.
A few more rounds of iterations and the Yin&Yang cat magnets were born… a bit of cute and useful fun for your fridge door or all other metal surfaces.

Inktober / Viztober 2020

When October rolls around, it’s time to get drawing every day to join one of the many #inktober challenges,. This year I chose the #viztober prompt list with 30 conceptual terms to visualise. I chose to keep my set of characters going for a whole month and while it was challenging on some days I really enjoyed playing with the little bear and his friend for a whole month. My tag #inktober2020evalottchen gathers all of the posts in one place for your to enjoy.