Meet Your Instructor

Hey there, I'm Barb! I’m a professional artist and graphic designer specializing in colored pencil and mixed media. I'm passionate about helping guide other artists with the tips and best practices I have learned over the past 20+ years. Join me, as I share with you how to improve your art business, refine your creativity and bring your artwork to the next level.

Find me on all of my social channels @barbsotiart

A little more about me

So what makes me qualified to teach you anyway?

I LOVE creating how-tos

Okay, this may sound really nerdy, but I genuinely enjoy creating how-to documents. I would argue it's even second nature to me. In my previous career as a Visual Merchandiser for a sporting goods retailer here in Canada, I created a guide that could train my replacement to do the job before an official company manual even existed. 

In my last full-time position at an advertising agency, I created a comprehensive training manual to onboard new staff and freelancers on all of our standard studio operating procedures and file-building best practices. A version of that manual is still being used with new contributors having taken it on since my departure.

 As a bonus, I also created a document that I could share with the accounts team that would help them understand some of our designer terms and tech specs. Being able to speak the same "language" when it comes to client work makes a huge difference. It empowered the accounts team to be able to speak knowledgeably about concepts and possible roadblocks on the creative team's behalf.

Did I mention I was never asked by my employers to do any of these? The need was there for the information to exist in an organized and easy-to-understand way. Sometimes, you just have to be the one willing to create the solution.
It's one thing to know how to do something, it's quite another to be able to explain to someone else how to do it in a way that sets them up for success.

Credentials

I have a Bachelor of Design degree in Visual Communications Design, over 20 years of experience as a professional artist, and over 14 years as a professional Graphic Designer.

Over the course of my creative career, I have worked with many high-profile brands including Coca-Cola, Staedtler Mars, Keurig, Danone, and McCafé. My work in colored pencil has won awards and has been recognized and published in international publications.

My passion for helping artists was amplified through my articles as a Q&A Columnist for COLORED PENCIL Magazine from 2016-2019. A selection of those articles was published in a book called The Best of Barb's Q&A in late 2019. Since then, I have been invited back as a guest Workshop Instructor in the magazine for the past 3 years.

I expanded the ways in which I am able to reach other artists in late 2018 with my YouTube channel and my guest co-hosting appearances on the Sharpened Artist | Colored Pencil Podcast.  I am currently the regular co-host with show creator and portrait artist John Middick.

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