Artists create sketchbooks to document their daily life or experiment with new processes and materials. Your sketchbook is your own private space to capture life, explore ideas and reflect on your experiences.
Materials
- Chipboard – or cardboard or very heavy stock paper – for covers
- Long sheets of paper for the guts of your book! These should be the same height as the covers but go beyond the covers, since it will be accordion folded to make the inside pages.
- Glue stick
- Scissors
- Construction paper – to decorate your covers!
Did you know that drawing can help your memory? A 2018 study by Myra A. Fernandes, Jeffrey D. Wammes, and Melissa E. Meade from the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo call it the Drawing Effect, whereby drawing things you are experiencing or learning helps you remember better than taking a picture, writing, or even viewing pictures.
How to Assemble
Send us pictures of your sketchbook and sketches to communityengagement@TucsonMuseumofArt.org or tag us on Facebook or Instagram!
What to Draw
Fill your sketchbook with these 31 drawing challenges:
- Self-portrait
- Something in nature
- A nighttime scene
- Bookshelf
- A friend or family member
- Your hand
- Desert landscape
- An animal
- Something from a kitchen
- A piece of clothing
- Something you ate today
- A room
- Flowers
- Something with wings
- Create a pattern
- A container
- Continuous line drawing
- Your name in elaborate letters
- Technology like a phone or a computer
- A mythical creature
- Light switch
- Your dream from last night
- A window and what you can see through it
- Your shoes
- Something abstract
- Create a comic strip
- An element of nature: earth, wind, fire, or water
- A city full of skyscrapers and buildings
- A type of transportation like a car, train, bike, or bus
- Just a doodle
- Artist’s choice!