In this episode, Jimi Holstebro discusses identifying gaps, pursuing education to fill them, and seamlessly integrating acquired skills into his work, all while enjoying the process.

Sponsored by Concepts

This episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.

Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings saving hours and hours of rework.

Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need s ideal for sketchnoting.

SEARCH in your favorite app store to give it a try.

Running Order

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

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Jimi's Website for Art
• Jimi's Website for Work
• Jimi on Instagram
• Jimi on LinkedIn
• Jimi on Facebook

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Thick paper
• Neuland brush tip markers
• Acrylics Pens
• Notebook
• iPad
• iMac
• Wacom Cintiq
• Clips Studio Paint
• Procreate

Tips

1. Don't limit yourself to gadgets.
2. Just do it.
3. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
4. It's not about being good at drawing. It's about conveying ideas.

Credits

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

Subscribe to the Sketchnote Army Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.

Support the Podcast

To support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde’s bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!

Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike, and I'm here with Jimi Holstebro. Jimi, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you.

Jimi Holstebro: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

MR: It's an interesting name that you have, and I think you gave me a hint as to your name. Why don't you reveal to the listeners how you ended up with Jimi when you live in Denmark?

JH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mostly because my father was a huge Jimi Hendrix fan, so they chose to call their firstborn son, Jimi. Actually, will be calling me Jimi today, but then it's Jimi with, you know, like a soft J and it's pretty darn hard both for Dens and for everybody else to understand the "Yimi," so we go with Jimi.

MR: Interesting. Yeah. Cool. Well, and so, tell us a little bit about where you live and what you do.

JH: I'm living actually smack in the middle of Denmark, in the part of Denmark that's called Jutland. Which is the mainland. You know, there's a lot of island seals. Funen and then we have Jutland. And in the middle of Jutland, there's this city called Viborg. It's a small city with 40,000 people living there. It's a beautiful old city with the—what's it called? One of those very old churches we have in Europe, which have been, you know, a trade city, an important city where the court is. Also, the old court from that part of Denmark.

So beautiful, beautiful city with some lyrics and it has a good football team. It has some handballs, it has stuff. Actually, I ended up here because I moved here with my children's mother back in the day when she started in school as a nurse. They have a nursing school here. Originally, I come from the top of Denmark, the top of Jutland at a city by the sea called Frederikshavn. So, actually, my childhood was in a small fisherman's town called Frederikshavn.

MR: Wow.

JH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back there I was like, you know, a little in toward kid—ah, that's not really true, but in toward in the way that when I came home, I sat down and then took out all my pencils and my markers and start drawing, listening to music, and just sat drawing all afternoon and reading comic books. I think maybe you heard that kind of story before about people interested in drawing. They have like, you know, hours and hours of reading comics and then trying to draw it themselves.

MR: Yeah, I had that history myself, you know, living our best lives as kids, right?

JH: Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of it. You know, normal school we have in Denmark. We also have, you know, like we have just a primary school, and then we go to some sort of high school. And after high school, I went to—actually, I started to read to become a teacher.

MR: Mm.

JH: Yeah. But when I was doing that, I applied to get into to the art academy. Actually, I got in. It's not something you just do. There's a lot of a lot of people trying to get in, and just few getting in there. Actually, I got in there and got my master's degree in fine arts.

MR: Really?

JH: Yeah. Back in the start of—middle of 2000-something. Yeah, '05, '06 or something like that.

MR: Did you have a specialty in the fine arts? Was there an area that you focused on?

JH: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, it was mostly drawing and graphics. You know, like old-school graphics. What is it called in English? I don't really know. But when we have paper, you put on rolls.

MR: Oh, yeah. Printing. Yeah, lithographs.

JH: Printing. Yeah, printing of course. Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. I did that a lot. So always been very, very interested in the line, in the black and whites, working a lot. Also, you just show me you have one of the books I made for Neuland, which is also, you know, just a line. Very, very simple. I'm a huge fan of that, so just drawing, just black and white. And I love it.

MR: Interesting. Interesting.

JH: Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of it. Then just started my artistic career from there.

MR: Interesting. And so, tell us a little bit about what you do now?

JH: Yeah, actually, the last decade I've been independent, let's call it graphic facilitator because that's the word people understand. Actually, I'm not very fond of it anymore, and I'm referring more and more to myself as just being [unintelligible 05:14 ] but I draw because that's what I do.

MR: And I think everybody understands it too, right?

JH: Yeah, yeah. They do now because when I think graphic facilitation popped up in Denmark like 12, 15 years ago or something like that, and some people started doing it, and I actually quite fast got a grip of it and heard of it and tried it. And got a lot of jobs all of a sudden because it was also in the time when the social media, especially Facebook started rolling, everybody had an account, and everything that went on there was interesting.

So when people saw it, they kind of just called me or wrote me, "Can you come and help us?" But before I got there, I kind of stopped with art school in the middle of the 2000s. I didn't live from doing art, but it's kind of difficult. I think it's the same story in United States because when you're an artist, you are pretty much dependent on people liking your stuff.

MR: Right.

JH: And even though I have a master's degree, you know, it's not like being an engineer who's coming to tell you, "When we build this bridge, we need these materials." Everything has to be mathematically calculated to fit so the bridge won't fall. And when I come with my theoretical ideas about art and tell people it has to be like this because my reference is compared to other artists, blah, blah, blah. You know, people just say, "But I don't like it. I don't care. I don't like it."

MR: Yeah.

JH: And the internet wasn't—you know, there were no social media. So when I tried to sell art, you know, I had to drive around showing people my stuff and try to get into galleries or art shows and stuff like that. It was kind of difficult actually. So actually, I went back to teaching. Started teaching again and actually quite, quite fast got into managing. I started at a small school and they asked if I would like to manage the school. So actually, I ended up doing management for 10 years.

MR: Wow.

JH: Yeah. And in the area of special needs.

MR: Oh, okay.

JH: Get kids and yout