In this episode, Claire Ohlenschlager, an avid doodler, shares how she developed her sketchnoting practice, found a thriving sketchnoting community, and awakened her passion for teaching.

Sponsored by Concepts

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Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Claire?
• Origin Story
• Claire's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Claire
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Claire on Instagram
• Claire on LinkedIn
• Claire on Twitter
• Claire's Faces Wordpress
• Zentangle Method
• The Noun Project
• Lettering with Friends

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Hobonichi A6 Techo Paper
• Talent Paper
• Usem Note Cards
• TWSBI Fountain pen
• Sailor Fountain Pen
• Platinum Pigmented Fountain Ink
• Artline Fineliners
• Caran d'Adche Coloured Pencil
• Pop up Pencil Case
• iPad
• Adobe Fresco
• Procreate

Tips

1. Practice, because with practice, you develop your way of visual thinking.
2. White spaces don't matter.
3. It's not really about the tools, so don't go around buying a whole set. First, try it out before you invest in lots of tools that you are not going to use.
4. Words will help you find the icons and the pictures. Metaphors will help sometimes.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike Rohde, and I'm here with Claire Ohlenschlanger. Claire, it's so good to have you on the show.

Claire Ohlenschlanger: Thank you for having me. It's a very honor.

MR: Well, I've been trying to get you on the show for a while, and just timing and other things haven't worked out, but we finally have you, and I'm excited. You're someone who's been involved in this community for a long time, and it's always good to hear the perspectives of people who have been in the community for a while.

And it might be interesting for us to chat a little bit about that in our discussion too, and see, how does the community remain the same and maybe how has the sketching community changed a little bit? Obviously, we have new people coming in all the time, so that changes the community, which I think is great. But before we get into that, let's first start and let us know who you are and what you do.

CO: Well, I'm Claire Ohlenschlanger. I live in the Netherlands in the Hague. A very small country. I work at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, where I work at the Teacher Training College, languages department. I've been a teacher, I think this is my 34th year. Secondary education and now higher education.

MR: That's really cool.

CO: Yeah. I think it's the best job. It's hard work, but very rewarding.

MR: Oh, yeah. That's true.

CO: Yeah.

MR: I really admire teachers. The more that I teach, the more I admire teachers because I see how hard the work is. I enjoy it. It's really satisfying, but it's really hard work, and when you get a really good teacher and you see it, I appreciate it. I know how hard it is to do it well. So, thank you for doing all this great teaching for many years for many different people. I'm sure that people appreciate you for that.

CO: I think it's a very—it keeps me young. I was just saying that to my colleague because you work with young people, it kind of keeps me young, I feel, but it's very nice to see people grow and to help them progress and help them when they're kind of stuck. In the pandemic and the years after, a lot of kids have been stuck.

MR: Yeah.

CO: And so. It's extra challenging, but it's very rewarding at the moment. Very frustrating sometimes as well.

MR: I suspect. Yeah.

CO: Yeah.

MR: So, I'm really curious how—so we know that you're here, you've been teaching for a long time. You've moved all the way through secondary to higher education, but how did you begin? As a little girl, you know, on your own—you do sketchnoting and visualization, right? Probably in your work, but also personally. How did you get here? Starting as a little girl, were you drawing all the time? what's the story and how did you end up where you are?

CO: Well, I wasn't really drawing. I was always writing. So I was always making sure that I wrote in nice letters. And of course, I'm from pre-computer, so we had to do all the writing. And I also, as long as I can remember, I would always want to write with fountain pens and not with ballpoints or felt tip pens or maybe sometimes pencils. What I would also always like doing is add color to what I was doing so that what I wrote also looked nice. But not like we sketch these days, but I did spend a lot of time making things nice to read again.

I would also do a lot is doodle. I'm not a very good drawer but am an avid doodler. So Lots of my notebooks, I still have a lot of them, have all these little doodles all around what I wrote. Actually, when I started, I couldn't stand messy pages because I would always spend a lot of time on making it—that's what people always say, "How can you write things down straight away, so neatly." But I think that's from when I was very young. I've always been like that. I've never been a drawer. I've developed into a sketcher.

MR: Interesting.

CO: Very simple.

MR: Definitely an interesting perspective. Tell us a little bit more about that.

CO: How I came to sketching is I think somewhere around 2010 or so. You know, every so often you have a seven-year itch. And I think I was having a seven-year itch, and then I decided to go back to Uni to start studying again. So I went to do an educational master's. And as it happened, on one of the first evenings after class I was walking home and I passed our bookstore, and our bookstore had a workshop on mind mapping that was just about to start. So I figured I'd sit down.

And it was a very practical workshop. So we got a large piece of paper and some pens, or actually I probably had a pen. I always have pens in my bag, so I think I probably had the pens. And then he was telling us about how to mind map, and at the same time I was mind mapping. And that was actually my first-time taking notes of what I was hearing.

And that worked so well for me that everything I did in my master's, I started off mind mapping. I mind map everything I heard on my lectures, but also the books and the articles I read. And gradually I found myself needing pictures and visuals. And then of course, I started because I was intrigued by the fact that it was helping me so much to, you know, remember and to retain the information.

And while I was getting feedback, people telling me, "Oh, it looks so nice, and can I make a copy of it?" Et cetera. And so gradually, I found myself needing pictures. So I started looking into it, and that's how I came across your book. And then I thought that was really interesting. So then I looked into that, and then gradually I turned my mind maps into sketchnotes.

So actually, quite often when I sketchnote, it has the order of a mind map that works from the top to the bottom back up again. And I noticed that the mind maps, how I started this is, I can still find it in my notes. I use a lot of colors and a lot of arrows and what you would do in mind maps. I think it's probably o