Drawing from the ground up
Nadia has spent over a decade teaching and writing about drawing fundamentals — the kind of foundational work that most people skip and then wonder why their marks feel wrong. Claimhavens is where she puts it all in plain language.
Nadia started drawing seriously in her early twenties — not from natural gift, but from frustration. She kept producing marks that looked nothing like what she intended, and the usual advice ("just practise more") wasn't helping.
What actually moved things forward was understanding why lines behave the way they do. Proportion, gesture, the relationship between observation and mark-making — these aren't abstract concepts. They're trainable skills with clear mechanics.
Claimhavens, launched in 2022, is built around that same idea. The articles here focus on the specific, learnable parts of drawing — not inspiration or motivation, but the actual technical foundations that make improvement possible.
Nadia also interviews specialists in illustration, life drawing, and visual communication — people who've built real expertise through years of deliberate work, not shortcut methods.
Every piece covers one concrete idea — not "how to draw better" but something like (how to judge negative space by eye) or the mechanics of a confident contour line. Broad advice tends to go nowhere.
Drawing fundamentals take time. Proportion feels wrong for months before it clicks. The writing here doesn't pretend otherwise — (realistic timelines, real plateaus) are part of the conversation.
Articles are organised so a complete beginner and a returning practitioner both find useful entry points. You don't need to read everything — (each piece stands alone) while connecting to a larger map of fundamentals.
New articles go out consistently — not in bursts followed by silence. The editorial calendar keeps a balance between technique breakdowns, (specialist interviews), and perspective pieces on how drawing fits into daily creative practice.
The interview series on Claimhavens brings in practitioners who've built real depth in specific areas — life drawing, illustration, visual journalism. These aren't general conversations about creativity; they're focused on what the person actually does and how they learned to do it.
Tomás Bareil
Illustrator & life drawing instructor
"Gesture isn't about speed — it's about deciding what matters before your hand moves."
Questions or pitches for the interview series go to help@claimhavens.com. Nadia reads every message, though response times vary depending on publishing schedule.
Read the interview series
Conversations with specialists in drawing, illustration, and visual practice — published regularly alongside the main articles.
Browse interviews
