An Accessible Sketchbook Challenge

Here I was, thinking winter was over. We had some promising spring days for sure, I bought colorful tulips, purple and white crosuses already showed up before March, and daffodils are popping up everywhere, heads up like bright yellow trumpets.

But as Prince (later TAFKAP) sang in 1986: sometimes it snows in April. And so it did, on the first of april. Not a fun april fool's joke. Brrr. Back into the winter coat when going outside, and back under the blanket on the couch in the evening!

Of course I’m not writing this post to complain about unpredictable April weather. But these things DO tend to creep into my sketchbook pages.

If I look back at my sketchbook pages that I filled during the past winter months, it’s mostly things inside our home. Gray and cold weather makes it uninviting to go outside to draw, and during the lockdowns there were no coffee bars or restaurants to go to.

Whenever things seem to become dull or boring, I’ll switch up tools and techniques to give myself variety and challenges. I would be thinking of a bigger drawing challenge for myself right now if it wasn’t for my current project outside my sketchbook: my book about drawing; “Life is better when you Draw (it)” Here's an example of a small and accessible challenge for your sketchbook: I call it "drawing snippets", or a "sketch collage".

Instead of trying to draw a scene, your view, you pick small things and draw them. No need to think about proportions - you can draw small things big, and big things tiny. Everything goes. You can fill up the whole page in one sitting, or add a little drawing to your page every couple of hours, or one a day, until the page is filled with stuff around you.

I filled the left page on a Friday evening, and the right page the next morning.
Materials used:
-Hahnemühle Nostalgie A5 Sketchbook
-Lamy Safari nib B

Here's a video that you'll probably like - in this Draw Tip Tuesday video I show you how I fill a page with "snippets".