Getting Started with Sketchnotes [2]: Eva Lotta-Lamm - Domestika Sketchnoting Course

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Dec 11, 2024

When I started to imagine this newsletter as a space bringing together [ever-so-aspiring] sketchnoters and anthropologists, I did hit a bit of a dilemma: how can folks who [probably] know nothing about the “science of wonder” (as I like to refer to anthropology) share space with those who [likely] know nothing about drawing—and vice versa?
To answer, let’s bust a few myths:
Myth 1: There’s actually a vibrant field called “graphic ethnography/anthropology” that combines these worlds. It’s legit, and I’ll gush more (much more) about it later.
Myth 2: Sketchnoting and anthropology do share some core qualities: bounciness (the ability to get creative on the spot) and curiosity (an endless openness to wonder about everything and everyone). They’re natural allies—but getting practitioners from such separate spaces and worlds on the same page can sometimes feel like a challenge.
Myth 3: Sketchnoting and anthropology are not so much an art as they are an approach: you do it best by doing it over and over again, likely falling apart along the way, reconstituting yourself bit by bit again and again.
Myth 4: Both sketchnoters and anthropologists lean into lifelong learning. But venturing into the other’s field can feel daunting without a good guide (me clearly signing up for trouble here).
And this is how this series of posts, or “snapshots” (rather than the more pompous title “reviews”) on “how to get started” came to mind. In this series, I alternate notes for beginners (or eternal returnees like me) in anthropology/ethnography, along with sketchnoting: expect reflections on concepts and methods, books and courses, personal experiments grounded in red carpet gloriousness or charcoal-tumeric-toothpaste kind of fiascos.

If you are new to the series, start here with Mike Rohde’s Sketchnote Handbook. In this second installment we are checking out a course, hosted by Domestika and taught by Eva Lotta-Lamm: Sketchnoting: Communicate with Visual Notes.

Getting Started with Sketchnotes [2]:
Eva Lotta-Lamm’s Domestika Course:
Sketchnoting - Communicate with Visual Notes

Why pick this course?

This is one of my favorite sketchnoting courses, and even more broadly, one of my favorite sketchnoting tools! I am already quite a fan of Domestika, an online learning platform designed for aspiring creatives that offers a wide range of courses in varied areas such as design, photography, illustration, crafts, and more. Their courses are sort of my way to really relax while being awed and inspired, even if I tend to not actually apply anything I learn afterward (laziness and all that).

So as a fan of Domestika and a fan of sketchnoting, I was all too excited by Eva’s course. And it is fantastic! I think I must have watched it 2 to 3 times at this point, but I also sometimes go back to specific moments or additional materials available through the platform. The entire workshop is about 5 hours of video content, which is now quite rare since Domestika has chopped its curriculum into shorter bits.

I love that this course is on the longer end: Eva walks you through every step of the process, while she also does the thing herself. It really feels like a hands-on workshop, and the pace gives you time to find your own rhythm and digest what’s going on. At first, I wasn’t sure I wanted to get the course because it is in German, but I actually like that Domestika offers a venue for instructors to express themselves in a multitude of languages. And on this particular course, they did a pretty good job with the subtitles (sometimes their subtitles can be a total hit & miss, at least to the English-speaking end-user).

The course is so good that, at this point, it has been attended by more than 23,000 students! Simply amazing for something like sketchnoting, which is much more niche than say a tutorial on Photoshop or a ‘how to draw for beginners’ course for example.

Eva’s course is aimed at novices but I am ready to bet that even if you are seasoned in sketchnoting you will find some great refreshers here and there.

Screenshot from the course page & trailer.

How does this course work?

The overall goal of the course is, as per the website states to:

“Learn to capture presentations and other content as well as take expressive meeting notes in real-time by combining text and sketches”.

It’s basically a solid and thorough introduction to everything you need to know to get started in sketchnoting. As with most Domestika courses, you will start with an introduction of the instructor and their background along with a presentation of their influences and sources of inspiration (and yes the total fan-girl in me was so very thrilled to find out that quite a few of Eva’s favorites are also my favorites! 👯).

After a short prefacing of what sketchnotes are, what skills and materials are required (spoiler: not much if nothing at all), and why and how visual thinking can be so powerful to convey ideas and messages, you will learn the basics of sketching and handwriting, the various formats to structure content hierarchically, and some tips and examples for images and icons.

Then comes time to practice: you will pick a lecture of your choice to work on your final project which aims at a sketchnote summarizing the talk. Eva does this going step-by-step throughout the course, showing us exactly how she goes about things before the talk (research, preparation…), during, and after. There is a brief concluding section on how to share sketchnotes on social media and voila: you are now officially graduating to practitioning sketchnoter!

You can work along the course, or like me, passively and casually watch it, before taking it as a real active participant later on. I personally find live recording highly intimidating and I totally procrastinated on actually doing it for a while. I ended up choosing Martha Barnard Rae’s TED talk on ADHD In Women & Girls for my final project, and while it was relatively short it was so much work! Granted: I was overthinking it and over-preparing. I went down to the deep bottom of the rabbit hole when it came to selecting icons and took so many notes that I could have probably recited the talk afterward (right…). But you can definitely keep things short, sweet, and simple, the way sketchnotes are actually supposed to be.

In the end, I truly enjoyed the process and was so happy with my final sketchnote: nothing grand about it but I had finally done it, quite the achievement if you ask me! It definitely felt like the course achieves what really good teaching gets you to do:

learn something new, open your horizon to other references or approaches, get out of your comfort zone through practice, challenge yourself to do a final project, and leave the course with the feeling that you are indeed a happily graduated sketchnoter.

I can’t recommend it enough.

Just a flip through of some of my notes from the course...

More? Sure can do!

The course really left me wanting to find out more about Eva Lotta-Lamm and her own sketchnoting practice. And you can actually gain tons from visiting her website.

It offers more courses (such as Pragmatic Sketching, Pragmatic People, and Pragmatic Portraits, which all look amazing but which I haven’t been able to take yet).

I really wanted to grab a copy of the Sketchnoted Travel Diary but unfortunately, the English version is out of stock. When I asked, Eva was nice enough to direct me to her sketchnoted travel blog Secrets From The Road which I now always direct students toward when I teach ethnographic sketchnoting (I also use it myself as a source of legit inspo-crastination).

I can’t wait to receive a copy of YogaNotes: How to sketch yoga postures & sequences in a few weeks, not because I do yoga (I don’t, laziness and all that……………), but because I found that training myself on Eva’s “Little People” series really helps to get the brain prepped for a multitude of situations and positions. So I am looking forward to flexing my visual and drawing muscles with the yoga book.

A good fountain pen, my binder of drafty icons, my e-reader filled with Eva Lotta-Lamm’s “Little People”, and a lot of pages of glorious and not so glorious reproductions in training.

The Little People materials are also another very good reason to head toward Eva’s website: those are downloadable materials where you can learn to up your stick-figure game whether you are depicting single individual day-to-day situations (sitting at a laptop, reflecting, walking…) or interactions of “little pairs”. They are all so relatable and incredibly easy to reproduce: definitely a must-add to anyone’s sketchnoting toolkit, total beginner or you know… whatever comes after that!

Hope you enjoy this new series, let me know what you think!

I hope you enjoyed this reading. If you have comments or questions please feel free to leave them here, this page will feel less lonely! 👯

The Sketchy Anthropologist

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