Hi and welcome ✦
I am Iva and I'm a mixed media artist and educator. Also a houseplants collector, quirky cafés regular, avid snorkeler, and committed animal greeter. Ask any cat, dog, or basically any animal I've ever met 😊
I work in gouache, watercolors, colored pencils, Neocolors, markers, and Procreate.
I help you learn color, composition, drawing people and sketchbooking, so you can turn what you imagine into art you love. What I want most is for you to finish a drawing, look at it, and say, "I made that and I love it."
Let's make art you love, together!
My background
almost 20 years in the creative field
teaching art since 2015
artists taught worldwide
I've worked in the creative field since 2008, as a concept designer, illustrator, and art director. I spent 7 years at LEGO, the toy company, on character design, style guides, color scripts, storyboards, and packaging. That work included LEGO Friends, which won Toy of the Year in 2013, and the animated series that ran on Netflix and Disney. I also did book concepts and layouts with DK Books, costumes and designs for LEGOLAND parks, and early work on LEGO Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the first LEGO Movie.
I've been teaching art since 2015. More than 100,000 artists from around the world have taken my classes, both in person and online.
So many artists tell me the same thing: "I feel something in my drawing is off, but I can't tell exactly what." You know it isn't working, but you can't name why. The good news: seeing what's off is a skill, not something you're born with. I'll help you build it.
Most frustration comes from not knowing how to see, what to include, and also what to leave out. We start there, because once you see clearly, the techniques get much easier to learn.
Once you understand the way of seeing and build your art fundamentals, experimentation is more fun and it leads to developing your style because you don’t have to worry so much about fixing the fundamentals.
Small, beautiful projects you can actually complete. Because you're busy, your time matters, and you deserve to feel proud of what you make.
You'll know why your mixed greens turn muddy, and how to keep them clean. Why a drawing feels flat until you push the values darker. Why moving one shape makes a crowded page suddenly look much better. Once you understand the reason, it stays with you. You'll use it on your next drawing, and the one after that.
Each project is small enough to finish in a sitting or two, and made to enjoy while you're in it. You see your own progress fast, and that's the thing that keeps you coming back!
The way you learn to see a subject, and decide what to keep and what to leave out, works in every medium. People are often surprised when they find out that some of my drawings are painted in Procreate on iPad. Each medium has its own feel and nuances, but what happens underneath stays the same. So you learn it once and whether you pick up gouache, watercolors, colored pencils, Neocolors, markers, or Procreate, the skill comes with you.
You end up with real drawings, done and complete. The kind of artworks you want to show someone, then open your sketchbook again tomorrow to make the next one. That feeling of "I made that, and I like it" is what turns art from a thing you keep meaning to do into a thing you actually do.
"I learned so much about using color and light to make my art more emotional and impactful. It just clicked in a way it never did before. Iva made it super practical and easy to follow, and now I feel way more confident with my work. I loved it!"
"I needed this class so much, it gave me so much clarity and confidence! Many times, illustrating, I felt, that something is off, but couldn‘t tell exactly, what. Now I know, how to make compositions, so that they just feel finished. Thank you!!"
"This class has helped me so much with drawing backgrounds! I used to be afraid of drawing buildings and interior because of the perspective... but now I'm feeling brave and confident to try to put some perspective as my background. Thank you so much Iva, your way of explaining things are so easy to follow ;)"
"Color is something I always struggle with in my work. This class gave me real examples to practice and start to create my own color palettes without feeling overwhelmed. Iva's explanations of why she chose certain colors also really helped me better understand the process."
"Great intro class to the basics of color, light and shadow with plenty of helpful tips and examples. I especially liked the comparing of both digital and traditional artwork. Thankyou Iva for your expertise and another excellent art class that is much needed for any student staring out in this skill."
"I was always interested to draw people and always thought it was going to be a difficult task. This class changed it! I am able to draw really cute characters now and I can't stop. So happy to have taken this class. Really helpful, accessible, and inspiring :)"
Almost twenty years in the creative industry, ten of them teaching. Here's how I got here.
As a kid I loved to draw animals and landscapes :)
My love of art came from my grandma, who made these beautiful, detailed folk artworks in a sketchbook, and from my parents who used to read to me from illustrated storybooks. They signed me up for art classes during my grammar school, but I stopped once high school began.
When I grew up, everyone around me said artists couldn't make a living, so instead of going to an art school, I got a business degree.
For a long time, I thought the thing I was missing was talent. Nobody ever told me art was a skill I could build, so I believed the doubt. I just sketched for myself, for fun, when I had time.
It was a lot of fun to come up with campaign ideas :)
I found art again the day I picked up a Wacom and opened Photoshop, during an internship at an ad agency. I hadn't drawn seriously in ten years. I was hired as a concepter, sketching campaign ideas for brands like Ariel and Wella.
Before we moved into designs, photoshoots, and video ads, I'd draw the ideas so clients could understand them faster. The sketches were rough on purpose. What mattered was whether the idea reached the client fast, not whether it looked polished.
The internship inspired me to apply to a design school where I wanted to study fabrics and pattern design because I found it fascinating. They turned me down. I decided that settled the talent question for good. Looking back, it was a lot to decide from just one rejection. So I studied multimedia design instead, learned digital art and video making, and that path led me to LEGO, the toy company. In retrospect I believe the rejection was just a redirection to something better suited for me!
At LEGO I mainly worked on LEGO Friends
At LEGO I worked with and learned from so many creative people: storyboard artists, animators, character and product designers. Some could sketch a storyboard panel in two minutes, and you could read the whole scene at a glance. No detail. No polish. Just the right shapes in the right places.
I've always been fascinated with color, so I started studying it more seriously. Not just picking shades I liked, but how it works. How a warm light and a cool shadow make a shape look solid. How one color reads differently depending on what sits next to it. How the color choices in a scene set the mood before you notice a single object in it.
That changed the questions I asked about my own work. I stopped asking "how do I draw all of this?" and started asking "what does this image actually need?" I still ask it every time I open a blank page, and it shapes how I teach.
From podcast to workshops and client projects!
Then life changed direction entirely. I moved to a new country with a suitcase of clothes, no job, and a lot of uncertainty. In that open, slightly terrifying space, I started Art Side of Life podcast to figure out how professional artists build careers, and ended up helping other artists along the way.
Somewhere in there, a quiet question arrived: why don't I explore my own illustration? So I took everything I'd learned, put my own spin on it, and started sharing it. The podcast grew into a learning platform full of courses and guides, and thousands of students around the world have taken my classes. The way I teach is simple: one concept at a time, in something small enough to actually finish. One principle. One drawing. One spread you can look at and feel proud of.
My art inspiration comes from nature and its colours, animal encounters, meeting new people and hearing their stories, interior design, architecture, and decorations on old buildings.
I almost went to study architecture, but I wasn't sure if I can deal with so much math 😳
Every time I visit a new city or town, there are two things on my list: quirky cafés and botanical gardens. I love being inspired by other people's creativity when decorating their cafés, and I also enjoy discovering new flowers, plants, and trees. You have probably noticed it in my art. I love these little story moments 😊
I love animal encounters. Some of my favourites were feeding seeds to wild cockatoos, snorkelling with manatees and manta rays, visiting the Tasmanian devils' sanctuary, and sketching those cute "devils" while they were running around 😊
I've tried to learn several languages, including French, Croatian, Spanish, German, Swiss-German, Japanese, Dutch and Danish ... not that I can use them fluently because some are so hard 😳😊 That's why my mixed cute accent in English
Some of my most memorable cultural inspirations come from a trip with my art class to Renaissance towns in Italy and studying the old masters, visiting the Alice in Wonderland café in Japan, getting lost in towns of northern Europe and admiring their colourful houses, taking walking tours in Australian cities with their imaginative murals and sketching Flamenco dancers in Spain.
When I am not working or not making art, you will find me drinking coffee with a good book, doing sports, or watching YouTube videos about interior design and tiny houses.
I love pizza and freshly baked bread, but I am allergic to white flour ... you can see the irony 😳 But at least I learned how to make good dough from buckwheat flour!! 😊
I spend my days drawing animals, plants, and wild places, so it only feels right to support the people working to protect them.
I support two organisations doing the real, unglamorous work, through donations and by sharing what they do. If you'd like to join in, the links are the easiest way. I also support local nature protection groups either through donations or engagement.
I also donate my time and artwork to thoughtful projects around protecting nature and animals, such as judging the illustration category for the Blue Footed Booby Prize (which donates to the Galapagos Conservation Trust), and contributing artwork to the Reverse the Red exhibit of endangered species for the World Conservation Congress.
I'm always open to supporting more projects like these. If you know one, get in touch using my contact form.
Restoring biodiversity
PLANETWILD
Grassroots, results-driven rewilding. Every purchase here helps fund their projects, and for each contribution, PlanetWild plants three trees in your name and three in mine.
A tree with every search
ECOSIA
The search engine that plants trees as you browse, protects biodiversity hotspots, and co-created the Global Biodiversity Standard.
Questions, hellos, or just want to show me what you made? I'd love to hear from you.
A gift from me
Join the Art Letters and get my free sketchbook layouts guide, the same page layouts I use to spark new illustration ideas.
