Ideas for Getting Your Sketchbook Started Keeping a sketchbook is a great way of keeping track of creative ideas and getting in the habit of regular drawing, as well as being a useful resource for large works when you are feeling short on ideas.

Remember that not every drawing you do needs to be a work of art, though certainly sketchbooks my often be filled with accomplished drawings. Before you sit down to draw, decide what your intention is for the session. While trying something challenging is usually worthwhile, simple subjects can often be rewarding. Try to find something that reflects your own interests and taste, be it still-life, portrait, landscape or fantasy. Check the related resources box for more great sketchbook ideas.

Sketchbook Suggestions • follow a lesson from a web page or book: • Work through lessons in sequential order • Choose a one-off lesson that takes your interest • Find lessons in various sources on a theme of interest • practice drawing exercises: • do a blind contour then a contour drawing of your subject • do a negative space drawing • do some 30-second rapid sketches • record something that caught your eye: • rapidly sketch the scene • draw some selected details • make color notes, or use colored pencil • note down some ideas: • Write as well as draw - your own ideas, or quotes • stick in inspirational photos or clippings • jot down composition possibilities • try out a new technique or material: • draw a familiar subject so you can focus on the medium • try a lightweight watercolor paper if you like to use washes • create a finished sketch or drawing: • use a good quality sketchbook for a reliable paper surface • perforated pages make removal easier Explore your imagination For some artists, philosophy, literature and art itself is a source of inspiration. Drawing can provide a way of exploring concepts, bouncing thoughts around and expressing feelings that are difficult to put in words. Traditional art forms often used allegorical figures and dramatic gesture, realistically painted, to express these ideas. Modern artists often use abstract means to expess very similar thoughts. Consider some of these approaches: • Experiment with mark-making. Do patches of scribbles and squiggles. Try aggressive, angry marks, smooth flowing ones, and regular ordered marks. • Use text as a design component. Use a poem you've written, or print one out, and create a collage based on it. • Illustrate a favourite text. How do you envision the scene or the characters? What atmosphere has the author created? • Respond to a text without actually illustrating it. • How does it make you feel? • Look for some interesting philosophers to read. Try Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Neitzshe, Bertrand Russell. • Read some poetry in translation. Rainer Maria Rilke, Odysseas Elytis, George Seferis, and the Japanese collection 'Ogura Hyakunin Isshu' • Start off with a photocopy of a realist image, and deface it. Tear the surface with tape, add layers of texture with restoration paper, thick pencil, and collage. Be aware of copyright issues with collage materials. • Re-interpret some famous images. How would you have painted the Death of Socrates? • Look at Anselm Keifer, Paul Klee, Jasper Johns, Tom Roberts, just for starters. Sketchbook Ideas -Drawing People - Faces and Figures Drawing Portraits is a demanding task - the subtle differences that make each human face unique can be a real challenge! Figure drawing is the classic test of drawing ability. Here are some ideas to get you started with developing your skills or break out of a rut with drawing.

Portrait Drawing • Draw your friends and family. How can you say something about their personality in the drawing? Consider whether you use fluid lines, soft marks or energetic squiggles. • Do a self-portrait in front of the mirror. • Do a careful tonal drawing from a photograph. Scan and convert the photo to grayscale to compare tonal strength. Remember though, the computer doesn't understand the 'brightness' of red. • Recreate an old master painting - use pieces fabric or hire theatre costumes for a day, and take some reference photos too. • Try some interesting lighting - use candles (observing safety precautions), lamps or early morning or evening light. • Do pages just of eyes, lips, noses and ears. • How many different ones can you find around you, or in magazines? • Study ethnic diversity. Ask people in your community to model or use magazines to observe characteristics of different nationalities. • Portrait artists need to be able to draw clothes. Draw a range of draped fabrics and clothing. Perhaps you need to try an extended technique - sgraffito (scratching), tape lifting or wax resist - to create some textures. • Take a visit to the art gallery or browse an online gallery. Draw thumbnail sketches of portraits that really impress you, and note down the characteristics that make each portrait special. Dramatic lighting? Incredible detail? Powerful expression of personality? Beautiful linework? Check through your list next time you sit down to draw. Figure Drawing • Ask friends or family to model arms, legs, heads and shoulders. • Use a dark background and directional lamps to create dramatic lighting. • Do pages of 'the tricky bits'. Look critically at your work - what do you most need to practice? • 'The Body as Landscape' - try doing detailed sections of the figure, with great attention to detail and subtlety of tone. • The great tradition of figure drawing and painting can weigh heavily on an artist. What makes a life drawing contemporary? Look at pose, composition, and drawing technique for elements of the modern. • Take a look at some old master drawings. Carefully observe their linework, hatching and shading. Copy and make notes about their technique to refer to next time you are in the drawing studio. PORTRAIT AND FIGURE DRAWING PROJECT Do a series of drawing on the stages of life. You could use photos of the same person, or draw different people from life, or a mix of both. Draw a baby, toddler, prechooler, junior, middle and high school age child, teenager and adult through to old age. What special treatement do the drawings need for each age? Think about color (or the absence of color), lightness or strength of drawing, composition, detail. What changes through each stage? If drawing one person, look for characteristics that remain constant. Animal Drawing Sketchbook Ideas If you have your own pet to draw, you'll always have a model at hand. But if you are having trouble finding reference material, plan a trip to the zoo, or ask a local animal shelter or even pet shop for permission to photograph their animals. A well- spent afternoon taking pictures can supply you with material for months of drawing. Just remember to take plenty of spare rolls of film! Here are some ideas to get you started with drawing your favourite furry friend or wild creature.

• Use line to reflect the animal's personality: a soft-focus pastel kitty, or a spiky pen and ink? A lazybones flowing-line pen pooch or a bouncy, energetic graphite gopher. • Practice drawing the animal in motion. Spend some time watching your pet, or on a portable chair at the zoo, doing quick thumbnail sketches that capture the main forms and movement. • Look at some old drawings. • What did you have the most trouble with? Eyes? Paws? Do a whole page just of that part. • We have a tendency to humanise animals or treat them like cute babies. Try experimenting with compositions that will show the natural dignity of your subject. • There are long traditions of painting and drawing domestic and wild animals that you can draw on - looking back at art history is a great starting point. Try drawing your favourite horse in the style of George Stubbs, for instance. • Take a virtual safari: do some internet research on a distant, exotic country. Draw the animals you might see if you travelled there. You could print out some items - flags, maps, diagrams - to add as collage pieces.

ANIMAL DRAWING PROJECT Create a series of drawings each featuring a different breed or variety of the same animal. In each drawing, look for the identifying characteristics of that breed. For some creatures, subtle differences will need to be observed. For others, the differences will be marked. You might like to isolate the animal on a white page, or set them in a typical environment.

Sketchbook Ideas - Landscape Drawing

Drawing Your Environment Landscape offers a vast range of possibilities for the visual artist. • Use a viewfinder (cut in card, or an empty 35mm slide)to find a composition. • How many different views can you find within the scene? Try landscape, portrait and square formats. • What is most compelling about the view? Focus on a single point of interest. • Record detail - bark texture, leaves, bricks. Render a speckled pebble in colored pencil, or the veins on a leaf in pen. • Focus on perspective - where is the vanishing point for each set of parallel lines? • Look for a human element for scale and interest • Tell a story: what has just happened in the landscape? What is about to happen? • Lanscape includes the urban environment. Draw a cityscape, or an interesting wall with years of overlaid posters and graffiti.

LANDSCAPE DRAWING PROJECT Record the progession of time within a certain view. You might even record the passing seasons. For this, if you can, mark your viewpoint (take a photo identifying your position) so that you can return to the same spot each time. You can also record the changes over a single day. Consider light, time and season and the changes they create. Take care establishing your composition with the first composition. What has changed? What remains the same? As well as variations of elements within the scene (people coming and going, changing shadows etc), think about light and tone, color, mark-making and texture, as a means to express the changes you observe. Sketchbook Ideas - Still Life Drawing

Drawing Objects and Arrangements

Here are some sketchbook drawing ideas arranged by theme. Don't miss the great ideas for drawing landscapes, portraits and figures, drawing animals and other sources of inspiration, on the following pages. Still Life Drawing Ideas • Draw a traditional setup of dishes, fruit and tablecloth. Experiment with arrangements, doing thumbnail sketches of each. • Arrange a few stainless steel utensils on a black background, and do a tonal study in graphite pencil. • Arrange some kid's toys, especially wooden ones, and old storybooks. • Clues to a narrative - let your drawing suggest a story that has happened or is going to happen. A bloody knife, a broken object, historical items and photographs, clothes on a chair - objects can be loaded with meaning. • Play with contrasts - old/new, dark/light, spiky/soft using objects and fabrics.

STILL LIFE PROJECT Tell the story of an object's life. For example: a mug in brown wrapping tied with string; Steaming on a cosy table with a beloved's teacup alongside; sitting alone on a draining board; sitting on a desk full of pencils, with a torn photograph; broken in pieces in the wastebasket. You might tell the story of a beloved teddy, a bunch of flowers, a bottle of wine, or a dollar bill. Need a challenge? Look for the most mundane object you can think of! Contemporary objects - such as a mobile phone - can be difficult, because we have no artistic tradition to refer to when representing them.