Goulet Guests: Spotlight on Liz Steel

We have a new video series that we’re starting called Goulet Guests! It’s a spin on our regular weekly Goulet Q&A, though instead of me (Brian) sitting alone, I’ll be doing Skype interviews with other interesting people in the pen community. In the past I’ve interviewed Nathan Tardif of Noodler’s, Brian Gray of Edison Pens, and Dante Del Vecchio and Mark Coles of Visconti. I hope to interview many more people and make this a regular thing.

This interview kicks it off strong with urban sketching legend and educator Liz Steel. Liz has been a fangirl of Goulet for some time now, and we’ve been following her and learning a lot from her sketching tutorials for a long time. When the idea came up to interview her, it was a natural fit.

In this video, Liz and I are speaking from halfway across the world, as she’s in Australia and we’re in the US (Virginia). The conversation flows very naturally so I don’t have specific time markers, but these are some of the high points of what we discuss:

What is her background, how did she first get into sketching?
What are her most indispendsable tools (pens, ink, paper)?
What first gave her the idea to use
fountain pens?
What is her method for sketching?
What gave you the push to leave
architecture and get into art education full time?
What’s the best way for someone
interested in sketching to start?
How has sketching changed or enhanced
her life?
What is the urban sketching community like, especially the global meetups?

We created a package set on our site specifically for Liz Steel based on her recommendations, check that out here! We have a shopping guide she helped us put together for sketching, too, check it out here.Thanks again to Liz for doing this interview, it was a total blast. We’ll be doing more interviews coming up, this is going to become a thing :) Next on the docket is Kara Benz from Boho Berry talking about bullet journaling, look for that sometime next week!