What Do You Actually Put In a Sketchbook?

Most people only ever see my travel sketchbooks. Those ones are a finished work in themselves, carefully observed, full of color and place. If they saw my work books they would ask if I was actually a professional artist. Fragmented. Messy. Honestly, someone would probably call them ugly.

But voila. I am.

I get why people freeze up with a new one though. You crack the cover and suddenly have no idea what belongs in it. The blank page problem is real, and when your feed is full of beautiful sketchbook content it is easy to feel like you are doing it wrong before you have even started.

You are not. You just need a starting point.

Here are some things I actually put in mine.

Draw what is in front of you.

Find a bench. Sit down. Draw whatever is there. A street corner, a cafe table, the view out your window. I drew Italy streets out of an apartment window at 6am once, morning light, no people. Best conditions I have had. You do not need a scenic destination. Right now, where you are, is enough.

Thumbnail your ideas.

When a painting is forming in my head I do not go straight to canvas. I do rough compositional sketches first, fast and ugly, just enough to see if the idea holds. They look like nothing to anyone else and they are worth everything to me.

Bridge your books.

The last page of one sketchbook becomes the first idea of the next. Or I pick a theme for a whole book and the first page sets it. Flowers as a theme, first page is any flower. It gives the new book a direction before you have filled a single page.

Write in it.

Not just notes alongside drawings. Sometimes just write. A line about what you are noticing, what you want to remember. Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his in mirrored Italian, which is frankly intense and I respect it enormously. A sentence works fine too.

Practice something specific.

Hands. Perspective. A mark you cannot get right yet. I once drew my stapler. Ten minutes, one object, one page. Done. If you want to fill the page, add a simple background. Pick a color, any color, and roughly block it in. You would be surprised how something that small gives a page some life and makes it feel complete.

Doodle with zero agenda, but give yourself a starting point.

Most people think doodling comes naturally but freeze when faced with a blank corner of paper. Try this: pick a shape and just start. Draw lines at different angles and see what they make. I have left napkin doodles at cafe tables and come back for my second coffee to find someone else has continued them. That started with a shape and a pen and no plan at all.

The point is not to fill a book with finished work. The point is to keep your hand moving and your eye curious. What you put in it will start to tell you what kind of sketchbook you actually need, and that is where we will go in Part 2.

Jackie