Seeds of Inspiration: Prep Your Sketchbook to Avoid Creative Block

1. Introduction: Daily sketchbook practice can have a powerful impact on your art. And yet, having to make a decision about what to draw every single time you sit down at your desk can be a massive source of anxiety and stress, even if you're a seasoned artist. A blank page is a friction point, an obstacle that can lead you to postpone your creative session or even avoid it altogether. Hi. My name is Ewa Rosa, and I'm an illustrator, embroidery artist, and Top Teacher here on Skillshare. Today, I will show you how you can prep your sketchbook for daily practice so you can avoid artist block and get into the flow of creation more easily. We will treat our sketchbook like a garden that needs planting, fertilizing, and tending before a beautiful art can bloom in it. On each page, we will seed an element or idea that can, later on, be developed into a full illustration. We will prepare some backgrounds to draw on, shapes to fill in, patterns to expand and collages to build on. We will also talk about different approach to creative prompts so we can start using them without feeling overwhelmed. This method will help you bypass the initial paralyzing anxiety induced by an empty page and will make your creative sessions much more fun and fruitful. By the end of this class, you will have a sketchbook full of wonderful seeds of inspiration, just waiting for you to dive in and develop a budding idea into a beautiful blossoming artwork. Sounds like fun. So join me, and let's get started. 2. Class Project: Your project for this class will be to prepare your sketchbook for future creative sessions using tips and techniques, I will share with you in just a moment. Prepare some materials you like to work with, or you'd like to experiment with. If you are going to use wet mediums like gouache or watercolors, make sure your sketchbook is sturdy enough to withstand water. It's a good idea to keep a pencil and eraser at hand so you can create some preliminary sketches. A bunch of sticky notes and pens will also become handy for writing prompts and notes on future illustrations. When you're finished, I would love for you to share some photos of your prepared pages in the project gallery. You can also take before and after photos, documenting the development of the idea from seed to finished artwork. 3. Fun with Backgrounds: A blank page can be scary, and yet you don't need much to get your imagination going. Even a simple watercolor blob can inspire you and turn into a wonderful artwork later on. This is the easiest and also my favorite way to prepare a sketchbook for future creative sessions. I love using gel pens and ink pens to adorn painted backgrounds like these with intricate patterns and transform them into abstract landscapes. If you find this approach interesting, you can learn more about it by watching these two classes, where I go in depth about using the technique and share tons of ideas for ocean and forest inspired doodles. The unpredictability of the watercolor medium adds a lot of fun to the process, as you never know how your illustration will turn out in the end. You can experiment with colors and shapes and create completely abstract backgrounds that you can later develop by adding ink pen doodles or layers of other mediums like colored pencils or markers. This technique is especially great if you're busy and you'd like to work on your art during work lunch, in a cafe or even in a subway. The messy step of putting paint on paper is done, and you can just pull out some paints or colored pencils and start doodling whenever you like. A series of backgrounds painted on one page can inspire you to create a whole gallery of tiny landscapes or flowers. These backgrounds can be irregular or shaped into squares or rectangles. And haphazardly painted small watercolor blobs can be a starting point for drawing faces or animals or imaginary creatures. Possibilities are endless, but you can be sure that putting just a little paint on your sketchbook page beforehand will make starting a creative session that much easier. 4. Fun with Shapes: Another great way to inspire your creative session is to cover a sketchbook page with different shapes that you can fill in later on. A collection of frames can become a starting point for drawing some funny portraits or tiny landscapes, and decorating these frames is a fun exercise in itself. You can sketch an ornamental keyhole and later on fill it with a magical landscape hiding behind the imaginary door. Some great shapes to fill in are bottles, jars, pots, and vases. I personally love drawing glass cloches and filling them with magical landscapes or floral compositions. If you enjoy doodling and playing with patterns, you can sketch clouds, butterflies, or folding fans, so you can doodle inside these outlines when you feel like it. Block letters can also be a great starting point for creating a beautiful illustration, as well as any geometric figures. If you like the idea of playing with shapes in your sketchbook, you might want to take this class where I show many tips and tricks regarding this process. 5. Fun with Patterns: Patterns are a fun and easy way to fill a page, and you can seed some pattern ideas in your sketchbook to develop them further during your creative sessions. Just draw several elements so you can repeat them when the time comes. You can scatter them on the page or fill one area like a corner with all the details you have in mind. You can do this with a pencil and add a sticky note with some notes on the color palette and medium you'd like to use in the future. Remember, you don't have to figure out the whole pattern at this initial stage. Here, I started just with the repeated moon shape, and only later on, did I add moths, ferns, stars, and the background. Designing patterns can be a very calming and relaxing exercise. What is more, they always look great on a page or a spread, so definitely give it a try when prepping your sketchbook. And if you are looking for fresh pattern ideas, check out this class where I explain how to find them in nature and create truly unique designs. 6. Fun with Materials: Another quick way to conquer a blank page and seed an illustration idea in your sketchbook is to create a collage background of some sort by playing with scraps of different materials. For your base, you can use some tissue paper, colored paper, decorative paper, tracing paper, scraps from magazines, stickers, or even pieces of yarn. You don't have to cover the whole background with these materials. Sometimes a simple strip of tissue paper left on a page can spark an idea for the whole illustration. Once you plant a seed like that, you can build on it by developing the composition with other mediums such as paints, crayons, markers, or ink pens. However, if you like the idea of creating paper collages in your sketchbook and you want to learn more about them, you can watch this class for some fun and easy exercises. 7. Fun with Prompts: The Internet is full of drawing prompts, but having a long list of great ideas does not solve the problem of overwhelm when you have to sit and choose just one out of hundreds. That's why I encourage you to choose a bunch of really exciting prompts upfront, write them on separate sticky notes and put these notes into your sketchbook. This way, when the time comes, you will turn a page and find a prompt just waiting for you. This will allow you to start working on it immediately without spending half an hour trying to decide what to draw. When choosing a topic that excites you, you will probably have some ideas right away about how you could interpret it. These are valuable insights, so write them down on the same sticky note for the future. This way, you will remember them when the time comes to work on this particular illustration. You can also jot down some thoughts on a color palette or medium you'd like to use. These will all become handy later on. This simple trick will help you to overcome decision paralysis and avoid a creative block at the beginning of the drawing session. 8. Final Thoughts: Seeding ideas in your sketchbook will definitely enhance your creative practice. However, there is one crucial thing you need to remember. If during that process, you will feel immensely inspired to start working on an idea you just seeded, don't stop yourself. Go on and develop it right away. After all, all these preparations serve only one purpose: to spark your creativity. So when you feel excited about an idea, just go with the flow. Follow that inspiration and see where it will lead you. This is the most beautiful journey an artist can take.