Picture it: Miami, 2010s. Jordan Melnick was working for an arts and culture blog, covering the Magic City from a hyper-local perspective. But when he wasn’t writing, he was connecting with his readership through a variety of community events.

“We had a reputation for pulling off fun projects. We covered Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ album, but just with local bands. We did a bike scavenger hunt throughout the city multiple times. And we would host this event, Sktchy Miami, where we would have all these art supplies and invite people to come and draw each other.”

The latter is what really drew people. Way more than he expected.

Sktchy Miami kept growing, all the while attracting a diversity of both artists and regular people. Some attendees were professionals. Others were just curious. And as the event continued to expand, Jordan thought about how he could create something with even more impact.

Jordan retired the blog from which Sktchy was born and shifted his focus to building an iPhone app for his new venture. In that moment, he saw Sktchy as a kind of Instagram, specifically created for portrait artists.

The premise was simple: People who joined would be able to share both their own art and their own photos, too. That way, everyone would be creating portraits inspired by photos submitted by their fellow members. And one shared photo could inspire 10 or 10,000 different portraits.

Sktchy’s iOS app grew, but not to the extent that Jordan had hoped for. “We did grow. We got up to tens of thousands of artists, we just didn’t get up to hundreds of millions of users.”

Still, the Sktchy app managed to grow a passionate following.

Jordan kept the app in rotation but also started to explore new models for Sktchy. Some didn’t pan out. Others didn’t feel quite right. But with a bit of reframing, Jordan was able to shine a new light on Sktchy.

At first, Jordan and his team hosted courses via Sktchy’s WordPress site, utilizing static pages to share lessons. But the courses lacked both structure and, even more importantly, a community component, something that Jordan knew had been Sktchy’s biggest strength:

He also already knew where to look. “We value what our community tells us they value. And Mighty Networks looked like a place where we could foster a community where people could learn alongside each other and build those relationships.”

Today, Sktchy Art School is home to over 18,700 members. While the community is free to join, members also have the option to pay for access to Sktchy’s vast library of course content.

In addition to a no-cost introductory course, the majority of Sktchy’s courses are priced at $30, and for a good reason: Jordan’s focus is to keep Sktchy Art School affordable for whoever wants to join. “Our focus has always been on inclusivity and accessibility. And our goal is to always listen to our community, be generous with the community, make things affordable, and try to make things free when it makes sense.”

Courses are taught by artists with a variety of different styles—from an organic artist who makes his own inks out of beets and avocados, to a painter with a loose, comic book aesthetic—so members can choose what approach feels best for them, no matter where they’re starting from.

Because of that, Sktchy has become a real safe space for a lot of its artists. Even more so at the start of the pandemic. “When people started locking down in April, a lot of members came in very hungry for creative expression and a sense of community. And Sktchy fit that to a tee.

There have been plenty of twists and turns along the way, but Jordan feels like Sktchy is finally in the place it needs to be.

And at the end of the day, the thing that Jordan started with is the thing that has made Sktchy the most successful.