A Endless List of Drawing Prompts to Fill your Sketchbook

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It happens to all of us artists from time to time: creative block. It is one of the most frustrating things when you open your sketchbook and the page stares back at you blank. You go to Pinterest and search for ideas, and if you are anything like me, you try to figure out how the artists of these posts came up with ideas so creative. It can be a bit discouraging when you come across something so clever where you are mad that you did not think of it first. 

I have also found that the longer I go without drawing, the harder it is for me to come up with ideas. So, I wanted to create an endless list of drawing prompts to fill your sketchbook that could generate some ideas from within you. This means that I will be constantly adding to this list as I come up with new ideas (so forgive me if I repeat any topics).

Now keep in mind, all of these topics are very simple and meant to give you an initial idea. So if you want to take it a step further and make "the object sitting in front of you" into a live character, by all means, go for it! The weirder, the better. [ARTIST TIP: Write out (or print this post and cut up) each of these prompts on a slip of paper, roll it up and put it in a jar. When you run into a creative block, randomly pull a prompt from the jar to come up with your next drawing prompt :) ]

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This list was last updated on: August 10th, 2020

1. Your favorite city skyline

2. A rose

3. An avocado

4. A landscape screen still of your favorite movie

5. A forest

6. The Milky Way

7. A mountain

8. Your favorite art supplies

9. Top view of latte art

10. Your vacation essentials

11. A collage of clippings from a magazine

12. The object sitting in front of you

13. A self portrait

14. Recreate the cover of your favorite book

15. A bear

16. A roadmap of your favorite city

17. A camera

18. Your childhood home

19. The man on the moon

20. A slice of pizza

21. An eye

22. A character from your favorite movie/tv show

23. Your icon/hero

24. A jar of cookies

25. Your pet / your favorite animal

26. A beach scene

27. Peonie flowers

28. A seascape

29. A city skyline reflecting in a pair of sunglasses

30. A glass of water

31. A skull

32. An open package of your favorite candy

33. A glass bottle

34. A car

35. Multiple hands in different gestures

36. One-point perspective looking down a road in between tall buildings

37. Figure studies

38. Your favorite international monument

39. A globe

40. Recreate your favorite movie poster

41. A two-point perspective of the space you are in (or your favorite room)

42. The technology/electronics you own

43. A pair of lips blowing a kiss

44. Your favorite childhood cartoon character

45. A motorcycle

46. A cactus

47. The food that is in your refrigerator

48. An airplane

49. A map of your favorite city

50. A portrait of your sibling or friend with exaggerated features

51. Your favorite fast food

52. Your favorite board game

53. A cheeseburger

54. Sushi

55. A fashion design sketch/rendering

56. What is in your makeup bag

57. Sea creatures

58. Wild animals

59. Things that are in your junk drawer

60. Geometric shapes

61. Monsters

62. Imaginary creatures

63. Your hometown

64. Furniture

65. Patterns

66. Your favorite things

67. Everyday objects

68. Places you have been

69. Song lyrics

70. Words that inspire you

71. Your dreams

72. Elephants

73. A crowd of people

74. Fruit

75. Leaves

76. Your favorite book or movie characters

77. Facial expressions

78. Birds

79. Houses

80. A rhino

81. Aliens

82. Trees

83. Feelings

84. Illustrations of your own version of social media icons

85. The last Instagram picture you liked

86. Hair in a ponytail

87. Feet

88. Different types of street lights

89. Your favorite beauty products

90. A landmark you hope to visit one day

91. The 15th photo on your phone

92. A building from the last trip you took

93. The events that happened in your day

94. Your morning cup of coffee (try to do this every morning. If you don't have time in the morning, take a picture of it and come back to it later)

95. Your favorite cartoon character

96. An airplane

97. Vegetables that are grown in a garden

98. Your favorite water bottle

To be continued...

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Sketchbook Tour

(This blog post may contain affiliate links. If you click on one of my affiliate links and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission for referring you. This comes at no additional cost to you. Please note I only offer resources that I have used and strongly recommend!)

(Click play to watch the video above)

This is my first official sketchbook tour and I cannot be more excited to have completely finished this! It took me longer than I was planning, but at the end of the day, I wanted to go at my own pace and not stress out about this. I was using this sketchbook to get back into the swing of drawing and creating and experimenting with my art. 

The sketchbook itself was given to me by my sister. She bought it from this hilarious shop out in Des Moines, Iowa called “RAYGUN.” The store has a bunch of apparel items, stationaries, and other trinkets that have really funny and sometimes brutally honest phrases on them. My sketchbook, in particular, says "Current Part-Time Struggling Artist, Future Full Time Struggling Artist."

As I said, this sketchbook was meant to be used for experimenting and not so much “finished pieces” so I was never originally planning on doing a sketchbook tour, but, about halfway through I decided to anyway because I love watching other artists on YouTube open up their sketchbooks for the world to see. To me, it’s kind of equivalent to someone opening up their diary and reading it out loud. But, I decided to take the plunge and put it out for the world to see. 

There is nothing much to it besides process sketches, experimental paintings, scribbling to try out new art supplies, and even some similar drawings and paintings I tried to mimic from Instagram. 

Feel free to watch the flip-through video, which is at the top of this post, or keep scrolling to see each page up close and personal. 

As I said earlier, my sister bought this for me from a store in Des Moines, Iowa. I'm crossing my fingers that this saying does not describe the fate of my future, but it does give me a good laugh. On the cover, the only thing I added was a sticker with my logo on the bottom right-hand corner. 

Coming up with a cover page was tricky for me. I watched a ton of sketchbook tour videos on YouTube and a lot of them didn't have a solid starting point. I thought that overlaying a piece of kraft paper with a random saying and the dates of when I started the sketchbook and when I finished were a solid start.

I was going through a little funk when I drew this spread. The cliche analogy of a glass half empty or half full popped into my head, so I decided to draw it. I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish with the man climbing up the ladder though. Maybe theres a diving board up there? 

This spread has a couple of different layers to it. I was first practicing some calligraphy with my very first brush pen, and then came back to it months later to overlay a Polaroid photo of my art palette and some extra paint from a project I was working on. 

I used this spread to test out some new washi tape and plan out the lettering for a sign hanging in my room, as well as experimenting with different patterns and textures. 

This is probably my least favorite spread in the sketchbook. I totally abandoned this and got a little lazy by not completing a page of roses like I had planned, then proceded to fill up the other page by just adding stickers that I got from a new bracelet and lipstick I purchased a while back. 

Pure irony. I grew up watching Star Wars and want to one day paint an incredible portrait of Darth Vader. I came across the sticker and had to add it to the spread to give the portrait a little story of my own. I then added my Rogue One and The Last Jedi tickets on the opposite page. 

I have never taken a formal drawing class, and have seen many artists across the internet constantly draw figure studies. It is a practice that helps you improve on your skills, so I thought that I would give it a go. 

I want to get better at drawing people - throughout college I pretty much just stuck with drawing perspectives and architectural drawings because that is what I went to school for, but I wish I drew people more often. 

And as an homage to my college years, I took a break from drawing people and drew this perspective of the interior of a modern kitchen. 

This was a quick spread. I used this for some scribbles and ideas for a tattoo design, as well as stuck a misprint of my avocado drawing from my Brooklyn Sketchbook Project series.

I kind of miss The Weeknd's old hair... it was an unusual style, but it was symbolic. So here is another attempt at drawing a more specific person, as well as including a lyric from one of his songs along with a couple of clippings from an art magazine. 

This is another lazy spread with one of my misprints of a sketch I did while studying abroad in Barcelona.

I drew this house because I was inspired by one of my favorite artists, Semiskimmedmin (Minnie Small). This past October, she participated in a worldwide event called Inktober and created ink drawings different types of houses and what haunts them. My house didn't nearly turn out as great as what hers did, but since I used watercolor it didn't turn out as bold as what it would have if I used ink. Here is Minnie's playlist to her Inktober 2017 videos, definitely check them out! As for the photos of the dogs, I'll explain that in the next spread description...

These were reference photos of two dog portraits I illustrated for commission pieces. I was very happy with the end results, check them out here (along with other illustrations) if you are interested in seeing how they turned out!

And here are more photos of the puppers... 

And here are some more photos of my niece pupper... I know, I'm looking like a crazy dog lady but in my defense, I was testing out my new Polaroid camera!

It was Thanksgiving, and at this point I was on my third Thanksgiving meal. I also tested out a new Pentel brush pen and Copic Sketching Markers as well as displaying a failed attempt of taking a polaroid photo of my Christmas tree.  

Here are a few more tattoo designs I did for my sister and myself with a stripe of metallic washi tape. 

More drawings of faces, one of which I was unhappy with the eyes, so I covered it up with paint. Another misprint of my travels when I was in Milan. 

This was a brainstorming spread for a commissioned guitar painting I did around Christmas time. Check out the time-lapse video of the project here!

There isn't much of a story on this page - I bought some gold leaf paper and discovered that it is VERY difficult for me to apply. This also was an extention of the previous page for the abstract guitar painting. 

A spread yet to be finished... I've recently become obsessed with these palm leaves and drawing them. I was inspired again by Semiskimmedmin to create an inverted drawing with black and white ink and paper. 

A dream of mine is to one day have my own art studio. I jotted down a couple of notes, drew up floor plans and started a perspective of what I would like it to look like. 

I came across this dude on Pinterest, I believe. I love sea animals, especially (octopuses?) (octopi?). The blue background is a mixture of primary cyan and primary white from my Holbein gouache paint set. 

Here I did a couple of hand studies (also referenced from Pinterest), and then tried a more detailed inverted sketch using white gel pen and colored pencil. It turns out that I am pretty happy with how the drawings turned out because hands have always been difficult for me to draw. 

The drawing sometimes makes my eyes hurt, but what led me to drawing this was a Skillshare class that I took online pertaining to finding your creative spark and the first lesson was to pick up whatever what was in front of you and just use it to create something. Once you had that object, just start letting it flow on the paper. Hours later, I ended up with zebra stripes so naturally I had to draw a zebra on the opposite page. The gel pen I used rubs off onto other pages easily, so I sealed it off with a coat of clear nail polish. 

On this spread, I was hitting a creative block, so I drew what was in front of me; a handful of my art supplies. 

This was a spread where I was having a hard time getting inspired, so I opened up a few magazines and clipped out images that I liked to create this collage. 

I like Rhinos. They remind me of grumpy old men.

Here are a few more sketching exercises - I tried drawing some difference expressions in cartoon eyes, then I took a Copic sketching marker and drew random shapes. From those shapes, I created illustrations of what I saw and ended up with results that I was quite happy with. 

I came across this illustration on Pinterest and immediately wanted to recreate it. I love how it turned out. 

This spread is unfinished, but I liked the idea of this man from a magazine I found him in breathing out fire. 

I am a succulent junkie. They are easy to take care of, and they add a fantastic vibe to a space. 

This is another version of the mountain scape I illustrated a few spreads back. I used water color to create an ombre affect, finishing it off with white splatter paint to add a starry sky. 

I've been reading this book on Urban Sketching because that is a technique that I would love to be able to do on my travels. They are very quick, look effortless and turn out to be amazing pieces of work. This view is that I attempted to quickly sketch is the view from my office in downtown, Chicago. 

These are some plans for a DIY drawer to add under my vanity (left) and a DIY coffee table (right) which you see me filming on in my Sketchbook Tour Video.

Prismacolor and Blick Illustration swatch colors. 

Reeves 24-Pack Gouache color tube set swatch colors.

thank you so much for your interest in my work! If you'd like, comment what your favorite spread is, and leave a link to your portfolio if you would like to share!