You should complete at least one sketch per week in your sketchbook. This should last between 45 and 60 minutes each sketch because the purpose of a sketchbook is to make you look harder at things, use your imagination, and explore ideas and techniques that interest, challenge, and stimulate you. You will find that practice does indeed pay off and your confidence in your abilities will increase proportionally to the amount of effort and care you put into your work. Full shading is expected, as are details. Use of colored pencils or other materials like pen and ink or your own favorites are fine! This is your place to experiment and grow. Remember: you’re only limited by your own imagination.
SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES
- Draw a portrait using light and shadow. Place the light from unusual angles such as under the chin, behind the head, in front of the face.
- Study your feet and shoes. Draw them in different positions and from different angles.
- Draw studies of your hands. Try a variety of positions or overlapping them.
- Draw a figure in an environment from your observation: in motion, and standing still.
- Draw an imaginary place. Remember to show rich details.
- Do a self-portrait. This can be full body view or face only. Be as accurate as possible!
- Try gesture drawings of people, things, or animals in motion.
- Try contour line drawings of figures or objects.
- Draw several studies of your eyes, nose, and mouth in a variety of positions and poses.
- Focus on drapery and pattern: a shirt over a chair, a sheet around a banister, etc.
- Draw everything you can see from where you are positioned. This can be from imagination, as if you were in a hot air balloon, ant sized, etc.
- Draw a man-made object.
- Draw a metallic object and everything you see in it.
- Draw or design any kind of vehicle.
- Draw an object of interest from 3 different views.
- Draw using 2-point perspective.
- Draw the inside of a mechanical object.
- Filling the page with them, overlap two-dimensional forms and pick a direction for the light to hit them. Shade accordingly.
- Draw your reflection in any shiny surfaced object.
- Draw a landscape from observation. Remember to show foreground, middle ground, and background.
- Draw your home and what’s around it.
- Draw family members with things they cherish.
- Draw the interior of your room and what’s in it, from wherever you’re sitting: on floor, up on bed, from ceiling looking down.
- Study the forms, shapes, lines, textures and color of trees.
- Draw animals from life (if you can’t see them live, copy them from a reference book).
- Draw a plant with as much detail as possible using line contour and line variation.
- Arrange a still life and draw it with shading.
- Draw bottles and cans. Have the cans crunched up for lots of detail and contrast to the bottles’ smoothness.
- Draw dishes in a drainer, with shading.
- Create a fantasy building and landscape.
- Create a series of positive and negative space designs.
- Draw a piece of furniture and use color to show the textures and shadows.
- Draw a still life with one to three pieces of patterned cloth in it. Show color and patterns.
- Focus on textures in a drawing.
- Using color (no black) and light (white), create an impressionist style landscape drawing, remembering to optically mix colors by placing compliments next to each other.
- Draw yourself using a strong light on one side or angle of your face, focusing on the shapes of the shadows of your facial features- excellent shading practice.
- Try several studies of DRAPERY- a towel, shirt, or blanket draped around or on another object to create lots of wrinkles. Focus on shapes of folds and creases and the shadow that are created by them.
- Advanced drapery: try the same exercise with a patterned cloth in color.
- Research online about any artist of your choosing and duplicate their art work style.
- Create a series of drawings of people in motion-playing sports; doing housework, etc. Try to overlap several views of the action as it progresses. Use light sketchy lines. This will help.
- Design a tattoo for someone particular-a celebrity; teacher; etc.
- Draw from imagination with as much real detail as possible. If you were awakened by a crash in the middle of the night, what would it be from?
- Draw yourself 50 years from now, including your surroundings, possessions, etc.
- Illustrate a favorite story of yours told by a grandparent, or other relative.
- Design an album cover for a favorite musical artist.
- Draw your greatest fear, your biggest hope, or your dream for your future.