Design a Sellable Calendar Illustration in Procreate
You keep saying you'll make a calendar. This is the year you finish one page.
- 4,000+Etsy calendar sales
- 6lessons
- 1finished page
- 42mstart to finish
One-time purchase · Lifetime course access · 30-day money-back
Liz Kohler Brown's calendar shop has passed four thousand sales, and she launches a new set every six months. Here she takes you through the part most artists skip — proving the theme is sellable before you draw — and then through the drawing itself, to one finished page you can put in front of an audience.
The reason it never gets made is not the drawing
It comes up every year. You think you'll do it, and then you don't — usually because twelve illustrations sounds like a commitment you can't justify before you know whether anyone would buy it.
So this class does one page. That is how every calendar Liz has made actually started: a theme, a concept, one illustration to test it, and no obligation past that.
The other half of the problem is the theme. Most artists open Procreate first. Liz starts with words — what people type, what comes back, and where the results leave someone disappointed. That gap is the whole opportunity.
Research first, because selling is the point
Liz has been teaching artists to design calendars for over two years. This is the process she uses on her own bestsellers.
Start with words, not the pencil
Type your theme into the platform you intend to sell on and read what comes back. You are looking for the search where a real buyer walks away unsatisfied — that is where your calendar goes.
Wide enough to be found, specific enough to be yours
"Sardines" is too niche. "Foods of Europe", with sardines on one page, is not. Liz shows how to widen a theme until people search for it without flattening what makes it yours.
Format is a sales decision
Square, skinny strip with the art on top, wide strip, tall. Liz has had the same artwork sell badly in one format and well in another, and she shows you the calendar she is reformatting this year because of it.
Finishing is a skill of its own
About 75% of the artists who start a calendar never finish one. Liz names the exact places people stall — the theme hunt, the style doubt, the redo loop — and how she gets past each.
One page, and a plan for the other eleven
You leave with a tested theme, a format, a finished illustration and a realistic idea of what a whole calendar would take.
A theme that survives a search bar
Checked against what already sells, widened until people look for it, and narrowed to elements you can actually draw twelve times.
One finished calendar illustration
Planned, drawn and coloured — with permission to make more than one colour version and let your audience pick.
Something to actually post
Export it, drop it into a story-sized canvas as a mockup, and ask the question that tells you whether to draw the other eleven.
A dated product sells differently to everything else you make
Liz is unusually direct about the economics, and about which of her own calendars flopped.
Calendars carry built-in urgency: they are dated, so there is a window, and a window makes people buy.
Liz pays about $16.50 a calendar including shipping and sells at $44 on Etsy — a 62% margin, against the 5–10% she sees on other print-on-demand products.
A calendar is never finished. She re-releases the same ones each year, tweaking colours and improving pages.
One hour per page, one page a day — twelve illustrations inside two weeks, which is why the style has to be repeatable.
The photo-calendar market is saturated. The artist-designed, illustrated one is not.
Let's go from "I want to design a calendar" to "I have designed a calendar, and I know I have a solid sellable theme."
— Liz Kohler Brown
Your instructor
Over 4,000 calendar sales. Here's how I choose what to draw.
Hi, I'm Liz Kohler Brown. I've been selling iPad artwork through print-on-demand and licensing since 2016 — my designs have turned up on fabric, wallpaper, greeting cards and, once, a shower curtain at Target.
I launched my first calendar in 2023. I wasn't happy with the artwork and I published it anyway. The next year I put out two, the year after a lot more, including some deliberately risky ones. My calendar shop has since passed four thousand sales and I launch a new set every six months. More calendars is more sales, and the duds are part of the testing.
I teach in Procreate and Affinity Designer and run The Studio, a membership for artists learning to sell their work, out of a tiny house studio in North Carolina. I've been teaching this process for over two years. The instinct for what sells came from doing it publicly and paying attention to which ones didn't.
Of course you could work it out on your own … but should you?
You could publish a calendar a year and learn what sells the slow way. Liz has already run that experiment on her own catalogue and will tell you which parts of it failed.
The research step, done properly How to search, what to ignore, and how to spot the theme with demand and no good answer yet.
Honest numbers Real costs, real Etsy price, real margin, and the formats that sold badly before she changed them.
A finishing habit One page at a time, one hour each, one permitted redo — the discipline that gets a calendar published instead of endlessly reworked.
Finish the course, take the certificate 🎓
Lifetime access to all 6 lessons — 42 minutes, on desktop, tablet or phone, at whatever pace suits you.
Complete every lesson and you receive a Certificate of Completion for what the class actually covers: choosing a sellable theme and finishing a calendar illustration.
Lesson list
Click a part below to explore the lessons. All content is narrated in English.
What you'll make — one page, not twelve — plus Liz's own calendar sales year by year, the themes that worked, the ones that didn't, and the margin maths behind the whole thing.
Lesson 1 — Introduction1:54
Lesson 2 — About the Project12:19
Searching the platform you'll sell on, widening a theme until people look for it, choosing an orientation, gathering references — and then drawing the page that sets the style for all twelve.
Lesson 3 — Planning a Sellable Theme13:01
Lesson 4 — Drawing Your Calendar Page9:06
Exporting the page, mocking it up as a calendar, asking your audience whether they'd buy it, and the finishing habits that get the other eleven pages made.
Lesson 5 — Sharing Your Illustration2:36
Lesson 6 — Ready to Sell3:19
If it isn't for you, you get your money back
If the course isn't the right fit, that's completely okay. Email support@twotap.art within the refund period and we'll send your payment back in full. No questions asked.
Lifetime access to all 6 video lessons- Liz's research process for testing a theme before you draw it
- A link to Liz's own free class resources: the Everything Bagel brush set, two undated Canva calendar templates and her written guide
- Certificate of Completion
Design a Sellable Calendar Illustration in Procreate
3 Parts, 6 Lessons, 42 minutes of practical video training
One-time purchase · Lifetime course access
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*Prices in USD. One-time purchase with lifetime course access.
FAQs
Find answers to common questions about this and other courses
Liz Kohler Brown, a surface pattern designer and illustrator who has been selling her iPad artwork through print-on-demand and licensing since 2016. Her Etsy calendar shop has passed 4,000 sales, she launches a new set every six months, and she runs The Studio, a membership for artists learning to sell their work.
No, and that's the point. The class project is one calendar page, which is how Liz starts every calendar herself: test the theme with a single illustration before committing to a year of work. If it lands, you carry on.
6 lessons, 42 minutes of video in total, across 3 parts. It is deliberately compact — the work happens between the lessons, in your own research and drawing.
Both, weighted towards the business. Roughly half of it is choosing and validating a theme, picking a format and deciding where to sell. The drawing lesson sets the style for the page; it does not teach Procreate from scratch.
An iPad with Procreate and a stylus, and access to whichever marketplace you intend to sell on so you can search it while Liz does.
They're free and they come from Liz directly, not from us. On a page of her own site she sends out her Everything Bagel brush set, two undated Canva calendar templates and a written guide covering formats, sizes and where to sell — you give her your email address and she mails the guide over. The same link sits under the video inside the course.
Get Liz's class resources →Yes. Complete every lesson and you receive a Certificate of Completion.
No. This is a one-time purchase with lifetime access, including any updates we add to the course.
Yes. If the course isn't the right fit, reach out to support@twotap.art within the refund period and we'll refund your payment in full.
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