50 Sketchbook Ideas and Tips For All Humans and Some Really Creative Squirrels

Photo by Rachael Gorjestani

There you are, hanging out with your sketchbook, ready to get all arty, and suddenly your brain freezes. Your gnarled fingers clamp down on your pencil, and you let out an awkwardly loud screech of angst. You need ideas.

I’ve got yer sketchbook ideas, fella. All the sketchbook ideas you could possibly want (well 50 of them, at least.) Plus, an extra bonus section for tips on how to switch up your sketchbook to make it even more exciting and fun.

These ideas will appeal to current sketchbook-lovers as well as those just getting started, and you weirdo art students and teachers will find all sorts of good ideas here. 🙂

Let’s jump on in to the sketchbook ideas, including a printable download you can access. Further down the page you can find tips for breathing some new life into your sketchbook if you’re in a rut or tend to approach every page the same way. (Guilty)

50 Sketchbook Ideas

1. 3 animals wearing clothes
2. a long, full page of a worm
3. Practice drawing your thumb in different positions
4. Blind contour drawing of your bed
5. Draw your dinner
6. Cut a rectangle out of a piece of paper, tape it to a window, and draw only what is inside of the rectangle
7. Set up an impromptu still life using 5 things in your pantry or cabinets
8. Trace around your hand and then go in and try to make it look like something other than a hand drawing
9. Draw a mug with someone or something peeking out of the top
10. Make up some underwater creatures
11. Fill a page with only a section of an animal
12. Turn your initials into a drawing of some sort of food
13. Separate your entire page with 6 lines, then fill in the spaces with different patterns
14. Draw something using only dots
15. Clouds
16. Underwear
17. Draw a self portrait using pencil, and smudge it with your fingers so it’s as blurry as you can make it
18. Big huge cartoon eyes
19. Draw the outline of something without using lines. You have to just use the edge of a pencil to shade around where the object outline would be
20. Draw a skeleton the best you can, just from memory
21. Stacks and stacks of cars
22. Draw the simple house shape you used to draw as a kid, but then fill it in with tons of details
23. Half your face, half someone else’s – it can be a magazine face
24. Draw something (object or still life) using all cross hatching
25. Fill your page with stars, then color in all the negative space
26. Cut out eyes, noses, and mouths from a magazine, tape them onto your page, and copy them
27. Draw a basic face shape on your page, then separate it into lots of geometric shapes to color in or draw patterns in
28. Write your name in the center of the page, then draw things, people, ideas, whatever that you love around your name
29. Splatter ink, watercolor, tea, what-have-you on your page and turn it into something cool
30. Cut shapes out from magazines and use them to ‘draw’ something on a sketchbook page
31. Find an image of an old master painting, and copy it into your sketchbook
32. Make a simple line drawing, then write all over the top of it- try to ‘draw’ the words with beautiful lines
33. Find some texture that you like and do a few close-up studies of it in your sketchbook
34. Use liquid ink or a Sharpie to draw a black animal silhouette then use a white gel pen to draw its skeleton over the black
35. Draw all the flowers you can think of without looking at any reference pictures (or flowers). Make ’em up if you wish
36. Make a page full of copied logos
37. Start with a tiny circle in the center of your page, then draw outward, filling your page with tiny drawings
38. Hands, hands, and more hands
39. Fill the page with a grid and draw as many insects as you can think of (or make up)
40. Draw the cover of your favorite book or album art
41. 2 circles- shade one to look like a ball, and the other to look like a hole
42. Draw an object, but personify it by giving it a face
43. Spoons and forks
44. Inside corner of a room
45. Outside corner of a building
46. Marbles
47. Crumpled paper – bonus points for shining a light on it from the side so yo have dramatic lighting
48. Glass of water with or without ice
49. Scribble, scribble, scribble
50. Tree and fill in the trunk area with a really unusual pattern

Click here to download a printable version of this list.

Tips for Making Your Sketchbook More Fun

Try to limit yourself to shorter sketches on some of your pages, especially if you tend to approach each sketchbook page like it needs to be a masterpiece! You can set a timer for 5 minutes for a few pages, and limit yourself to filling 5 pages each in 5 minutes time. (You can always go back in later and add more.)

Try your hand at different media. Sometimes it’s fun to sketch the same thing on 3 different pages, in 3 different materials: try pencil, pen, crayon.

Switch up your style sometimes. Usually draw Manga? Try setting up a small still life or doing a self portrait as realistically as you can. Always draw landscapes? Draw a few pages of your beloved sleepy dog. (You don’t need to show anyone these pages if you hate them.)

Change your position. Try standing up and drawing with your sketchbook propped up on the wall, and drawing with your non-dominant hand. We tend to get comfortable and closed up while sitting with our sketchbook nestled up close to us, and just making these physical adjustments sometimes can make us approach our sketching session with fresh eyes.

Warm up your hands and brain by making some big, stupid scribbles on a piece of paper for a minute or two before you tackle the sketchbook.

Take 10 deep breaths or meditate for a few minutes before you begin. You want to approach your sketchbook with a sense of presence and actually enjoy what you’re doing.