The Drawing Coaching Academy · 12 months with Emily

Stop circling. Draw anything, anywhere, and know how you did it, inside a year.

A year of structured coaching that names the one thing holding your drawing back, gives you the order to work in, and has your own pages read back to you every month.

So the good page stops being luck and starts being something you can do again. And in your very own style! 

£2,500 for the year, or £210 a month · 30 day guarantee

Think of the best drawing you’ve ever done.
Could you do it again tomorrow, on purpose?

You’ve been in the sketchbook. Some weeks more than others, but you’ve been in it.

There are pages in there you’d never show anybody. And there are two or three you keep going back to. When you look at them you get a small, uncomfortable feeling, because you like them and you don’t know what you did.

One member of my community put it perfectly: "lots and lots of what feels like circling in the sketchbooks, with occasionally something I don’t dislike on the more expensive paper. But the successes, in my eyes, remain in the land of luck."

If that sounds familiar, here is the sentence everything in the Academy is built on.

Once is luck. On purpose is skill.

A drawing you can’t do again on purpose isn’t your skill turning up. It’s luck, because nobody could say what you did to get it, least of all you. Skill is being able to do it again, over and over, and feel the momentum build.

And skill can be learned. A drawing is really just a series of decisions: what goes where, how big, how dark, what you leave out. Decisions can be taught.

And once you master the skill your creative style and voice follow! 


It isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a structural one.

I put my art box away for fifteen years because I’d been told I would never make any money from it. I opened it again on 14 May 2019, the first day in my new house as a single parent, and drew my house keys. Then I did what most people do. I bought the answer, course after course, and convinced myself I couldn’t do it.

The courses weren’t bad. It took me a long time to see what was actually in the way. Three walls, and you may recognise every one of them.
  1. A tutorial can only hand you its own drawing. You follow along and finish with a version of somebody else’s page. Nobody shows you the order underneath it, let alone your own process.
  2. More pages can’t tell you which page was which. I drew every day for a long time. Some days a fluke came out really well; other days were just disappointing. Practicing harder never told me why.
  3. You can’t diagnose yourself from inside the page. I had no vocabulary for what was going wrong, and nobody was looking at my work and telling me what to improve.
So if you’ve bought courses and not finished them, or drawn for years and feel you’re circling, please hear this: you did the best you could with what you were handed.

What you were handed was a drawing to copy. What you were never handed was the order you need in order to be able to draw in your own style.

Three parts that turn a lucky page into one you can do again.

Give ten people one recipe and they’ll cook ten different dishes, each one recognisably right. Give them a photograph of the finished dish instead and you get ten guesses. The Academy gives you the recipe, and you still make it your own.

1. Name the gap. Before we meet, you complete a questionnaire about what you’ve tried and where you want to go. I write you a personal roadmap that names the things holding your drawing back, and we go through it together in a one to one. It comes first, because you can’t see it from inside the page.

2. The same principles, in order. Skill first, then colour, then your own voice, with figure drawing running alongside. One project a month, the same principles applied across different subjects, and a little every day rather than hours at a time. Ten to twenty minutes most days is enough when it’s pointed at the right thing.

3. Your page, read back to you. At least once a month I look at your work and send you a piece of audio: what you did, what you committed to, and what to do next. This is the part almost nobody has ever had, and it’s the part that changes everything.

A horse has muscles and a skeleton. A cup has an ellipse and angles. Almost nothing alike as subjects, yet I drew them with the same line quality and the same willingness to commit before I was sure of the outcome. That isn’t talent showing up late. It’s the same process, applied to a different subject. And I’m terrified of drawing horses.

Twelve months, eight things, one order, and people around you while you do it.

  1. Your personal roadmap and one to one. Written from your questionnaire before we meet, so you stop guessing what to work on next.

  2. The four phase curriculum. Skill Mastery (ninety days on the foundational principles of good decision making), Unlocking the Power of Colour, Signature Voice (building your own unique drawing style), and Being Human (figure, gesture and portraits) running alongside.

  3. Weekly live group coaching. Tuesday evenings, UK time, all on replay. Each month the whole Academy works on one central subject through the phases.

  4. Feedback on your own work. At least once a month in Slack: audio feedback and a set of recommendations from me, plus a self-evaluation framework so you learn to assess your own pages.

  5. The full course library, curated. Over two hundred courses, organised into your pathway. You won’t do them all and you don’t need to; we show you what fits where you are.

  6. The Scratch to Sketch Hub for the year. Monthly live challenges and annual programming, all included.

  7. Guest artists from January 2027. Specialists across different mediums, so you see where your drawing could lead.

  8. A community that draws alongside you. In one member’s words: "I met and got to know a wonderful group of fellow creative scribblers from around the globe."
You do every stroke yourself. What you get is the order and the eyes. I often tell my students: don’t draw like me. I’m here to help you draw like you.

What happens when people follow the order

Write your awesome label here.
Ewa could already paint a reasonable watercolour. 
What she lacked, she said, was consistency, which led to a lack of momentum, which became a vicious circle. “I procrastinated because of fear. I didn’t know the how.” Afterwards: “The crippling fear of not knowing where to start was no longer there.”
Vicky came to me uncertain of herself, with very little creative structure in her life.
The first thing she gained wasn’t a style. It was a reason to show up, regularly, to something small and steady. Her early garden chair has every leaf drawn at the same weight. Her protea has her order written at the top of the page before she drew a thing: outside in, space blocking, proportion. Then she took that same order to the horses she loves.
Simon works in the City and drew on his lunch hour with a sketchbook and a pen.
“Someone else had already figured out the framework, so I didn’t have to work it out myself through trial and error. I just had to follow it and put the time in.” In a year, his style changed completely.
Noelle used collage, if she’s honest, to hide from drawing people.
 “I used to dread drawing people completely.” Working in small steps, in order, it shifted. Human figures are now an integral part of the stories she builds in her collages.
Paula signed up having never really drawn, with one wish: to draw her cat, Rosie, well enough to frame.
When scoliosis began to affect her hands, her window became shorter than she’d have liked. “But I used every bit of it, and now Rosie hangs on my wall, finished, exactly as I’d once dreamed. I’m so grateful I didn’t wait.”

Debbie wanted to draw animals and didn’t believe she could.
Then she drew a robin, and someone asked if she’d take £40 for it. Her message to me was in capitals: I SOLD A DRAWING.

Over 150 people have come through the Academy in two and a half years.
About eight in ten sign up again when their year ends.

This is for you if:

● You’ve drawn for years, or on and off, and you feel you’re circling rather than improving.

● You paint, and your drawing underneath it lets you down.

● You put it all in a box a long time ago and you’ve finally opened it again.

● You have shelves of courses you started and didn’t finish.

● You want someone to actually look at your pages and tell you the truth about them.

And most of all you want to draw as you are designed to draw! 

This isn’t for you if:

● You want a nice picture by Friday and don’t mind how it got there.

● You’d rather copy a finished drawing than learn the decisions behind it.

● You don’t want anyone looking at your work.

The Drawing Coaching Academy.

£2,500 for the full twelve months, or £210 a month.
Bought separately, the courses, coaching and guest artist sessions come to £3,349.

Most people in my community are already spending £30 to £50 a month trying to solve this alone: another course, a workshop, new pencils, a planner. Over a year that’s £360 to £600, and the sketchbook stays where it was. The Academy costs more than that. The difference is what the money does.
Join before January and you also get two bonus months of Skill Mastery, so you start the foundations now and walk into January already moving.
The 30 day guarantee. If the Academy isn’t for you, tell us within 30 days of joining and you’ll get your money back. The one condition is that you’ve shown up: you’ve sent back your welcome questionnaire and started Skill Mastery, your first task whether or not we’ve had our one to one yet. I can’t fix a year you didn’t turn up to.
Not sure yet? Talk to Emily first

What happens when you join

  1. Choose how to pay: in one go, or across twelve months.
  2. Fill in your questionnaire from the welcome email. It asks what you’ve tried and where you want to go.
  3. Start Skill Mastery straight away, so you’re drawing before we’ve even met.
  4. Receive your written roadmap, ready before your one to one with me.
  5. Join us on Tuesday evenings and share your first pages in Slack for feedback.
For years I said “I’d love to draw.” Then I was someone who drew, until a bad page took it off me again.

The difference between those two sentences was never talent. It was whether I could do it again on purpose. That’s learnable, it has an order to it, and I built the Academy so you wouldn’t have to spend years working it out alone the way I did.

You already have what you need: the sketchbooks are in your house, the hours are already in your week, and you’ve spent a lifetime looking at things. All that changes is the order you work in, and who’s watching.

I’d love to walk the next part with you and help you develop your creative drawing style that is designed as unique to you.

See you on our 121. 

Emily x

Frequently asked questions

I’m in the Hub for £15 a month. Why would I pay £2,500?

The Hub gives you a live challenge every month and people to draw with, and it’s included in the Academy. What the Hub can’t do is name the one thing holding your drawing back, put your year in order, or read your pages back to you.

I don’t have hours to spare.

You don’t need them. Ten to twenty minutes most days is enough, pointed at the thing your roadmap names. Simon did his on a lunch break. Tuesday coaching is live, and every session is on replay.

I’ve bought courses before and never finished them.

Most of those handed you a drawing to copy, and nobody ever looked at yours. That’s exactly what’s different here. Your unfinished courses can even become part of your roadmap.

Am I too old, or not talented enough?

Many of our members started later in life, some heading into their seventies. What they had in common was never talent. Someone handed them an order to follow.

What if I don’t find my style in twelve months? 

You’ll know what decision to make at every stage of a drawing. Your voice is what comes from making those decisions on purpose, and the phases move at the pace that suits where you’re starting from.

Do I have to do all of the courses?

No. They’re curated into your pathway and you take what your stage needs.

When do I get my roadmap?

Before we meet. You send back your questionnaire, I write your roadmap from it, and your one to one is built on it.

Do I need to talk to my partner first?

 If that’s how you make decisions at home, of course. Show them the page you keep going back to and tell them what the year is for.

The question isn’t whether you can draw. It’s how you’ll spend the part of your life that’s finally yours.

Twelve months from now you can pick up a sketchbook, know what decision to make at every stage of the drawing, and have a body of work that is recognisably yours.

Once is luck. On purpose is skill.