4 Ways to Fill a Sketchbook (and Build Your Confidence as an Artist)

Today, I'm going to show you different ways that you can fill your sketchbook. If you're new here, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I like to show folks different ideas for painting and drawing in your sketchbook. I kind of consider myself a style hopper and I'm all over the place. So the ideas that you're about to see in this sketchbook will probably also be all over the place. Hopefully something in here speaks to you and gives you inspiration for your own art journey. And with that being said, let's get started. Let's start off with my favorite piece in this sketchbook video. I'm drawing a popsicle. And now you might be wondering, okay, why is this your favorite piece though? So this one is designed specifically with you folks in mind, knowing that you're all at different places with your art journey and with your confidence with creating and sketchbooks are a place that you can gain confidence. So this idea here is designed for you to be able to stop at any point. Like right here, I'm drawing this popsicle, has a little square bottom, rounded top, little drippies on the top with like vanilla, chocolate, whatever you wanna do. You can stop here and it's fine. Or you can take it to the next step if you're feeling brave and you can do three little leaves all over the place and then draw rounded triangles connected to them and that creates a strawberry. So I thought this was really cool because it gives you a little bit of a pattern and interest for the background. I tied in the pink color of the strawberries for sprinkles on the popsicle, which insinuates that there's maybe like strawberry filling inside or maybe just strawberry flavored sprinkles. You can use your imagination. So you can stop at this point or you can bust out some colored pencils, whatever art supplies you have and outline everything. That's what I'm doing, I'm outlining things and adding a little bit of shading. Right here, again, is a beautiful place to stop once you outline everything, boom, you have an illustration. However, if you're feeling like really ambitious and you wanna keep going and fill this page completely, keep watching. Right here, I'm taking some paper to make straight lines. You can use a ruler if you have one, I was too lazy to look for one. And I did a checkerboard pattern and I started coloring it in with purple. So I thought this was a really fun way to add some cheer to the page. You know, it makes the whole page so busy and colorful. It's definitely not necessary, I could have stopped, but this was fun and I felt like, yeah, a loud checkered dessert page would just make my sketchbook a more interesting place. You can also fill in the white checkers if you want, but I thought leaving them blank was pretty cool. I did some shading around the Popsicle to make it pop off the page, added some seeds to the strawberries and that was it. I hope you like it and I hope you try this one. Where are my portrait people? So if you watch my channel, you probably know I don't draw a lot of people anymore. I got really into painting flowers and oceans and stuff, so this is like not something I do very often, but this idea is so exciting to me. I'm doing a little self portrait here. You can just sketch a picture of yourself or whoever you want and then get a marker and color in all the hair. You don't have to do multiple colors, I'm just doing this solid color here, keeping it simple because we are going to build upon this and add other fun details later and it's gonna look quirky. It's gonna be so fun. So here I'm drawing a box around my portrait and some foliage outside of the box. Now to keep this interesting, you can see I left the hair bun hanging outside the box. So you can leave part of the portrait outside of your box. Now I'm doing like a zen tangle on the inside of the box with these bright orange colors. Guys, it felt so brave at the time, but I'm telling you, be brave with this. You will not regret it. Now I am coloring in the foliage outside of the box and kind of keeping it simple with some solid colors for now. This whole thing kind of reminds me of like wall decor that would be on like Urban Outfitters site or anthropology or something, I don't know. But I took this pink marker and I did some bold circular blush filled in the lips and then did some dark colors for the eyes. I took a fine liner and I just outlined everything to make it super illustrative. You don't have to do this part. You can pretty much stop at any point with this idea too, but I thought it added some interest. So if you have a ballpoint pen laying around and you want to play with that technique, go for it. I did really loose lines instead of like tight, neat outlining. So you can see like the colors are leaking outside the lines and stuff. I thought it was cool. Now I'm taking an acrylic marker and going over the actual marker. It's like acrylic paint and a marker. And I'm doing some veins on the leaves with the same orange color that was in that box. And I think it really made things pop. So if you want to do something like this, go for it and please tag me on Instagram. I want to see how you portray this idea. I think this one is so fun. Before I even tell you about this idea, I'm just gonna tell you now, it will eventually become a sticker in my shop because I love it so much. But I decided for this idea to turn an art supply into a creature. And I don't know, this just was flowing one day and I had to do it. So I drew this cute, tiny little pink pencil and I put flowers all over it. And that was honestly what I wanted to do right here. I was gonna stop after this. But do you ever get that feeling where it's hard to say goodbye to a drawing or a painting? In this case, this little doodle here, it was hard to say goodbye. So I thought I was gonna outline it in plants like this. And then I was like, wait a second, I can turn this into a creature. So I started turning it into a moth. I thoroughly love this idea. I think you folks will like it too because merging two objects is so fun. There's so much liberty with this and it doesn't have to be a stressful thing. You're just playing with your imagination and doing something weird. So the pencil is the body of the moth and then the wings are just coming out. I used a limited color palette for this one, the pinks and the greens. I thought they complimented each other really nicely. Now I'm just doing the antenna and yeah, that's it. It was honestly, it was pretty easy. I didn't even use a reference photo, but I hope you enjoy this one. And if you do this, please let me know what creature you do too. I just, I think it's so fun to see how we all think differently. The final sketchbook idea. Folks, we are gonna draw a house today, but not just any house, we're doing an animal house. It's kind of similar to the last idea, honestly, but I drew this bunny with massive ears and there's windows on the cheeks. The teeth are actually the front door. This just kind of came to mind one day and I thought, well, it would be fun to share this one with my art family because it's really playful and I think you folks would enjoy it. So I'm going to keep adding things here. You could stop at this point if you want to. I'm gonna outline it and shade around the edges. So after you outline the creature, house, whatever you wanna call it, you can stop here. But we all know I'm gonna add a little bit more. I'm adding some stitching, so now it looks like a stuffed animal house. Now I'm adding some funky flowers and we're gonna create like a flower garden front yard. You can skip this step if you're not digging it, but I thought it was a fun way to add a splash of color to my page. You can outline some of the flowers if you want or you can just leave it up to you. I thought it was fun to outline them. And I also like that the yard is this wavy blob. After that, I felt like this house was lonely, so I put some clouds around it and I turned those into creatures as well. So yeah, you could stop at the yard or you could keep adding creatures. So we have some clouds with faces. Then I felt like it needed a sun, so I drew a sun. And then obviously we had to give the sun a face as well. So there you go. I hope you like this idea. Alrighty, folks, that is the sketchbook ideas video. I did not do as many ideas as I would typically do in an art ideas video. Usually my sketchbook idea videos are like five to 10 ideas. This one was four, but these ideas took a really, really long time. And I wanted you to be able to get something out of this in the sense that there are different steps in these pieces. Like you could draw the popsicle and then you could stop and that could be your thing, or you could continue. So this video is really centered around building your confidence as an artist. For some folks, it's super easy to do all the steps in all of these pieces and it's fine. But some people could see like one thing, like the strawberries on the one drawing, or maybe just drawing the flower yard on the little house drawing. And it could be really intimidating and discouraging for them. I wanted this video to be welcoming and inclusive to all folks who are trying to create out there. And yeah, I really enjoyed this one too. I felt like my imagination was just like all over the place. With that being said, have a beautiful day and I will see you later. Bye.