10 ideas to fill a blank sketchbook

You just bought a new sketchbook . It's there: beautiful, clean, and shiny, sitting on the corner of your desk or on a shelf. You open it full of hope and see that infinity of possibilities in the form of desperate white pages . You grab a pencil, scribble something, feel bad about ruining the first page, try to erase or tear out the page, make matters worse, and put it back to grow old alone in a corner as if it were a curse.

This is a scene that must have played out millions of times in artists' homes—at least in mine, I know it's happened more than once. I don't know what it is about blank pages, but they have an absurd ability to drain us of all that is creative, joyful, and bubbly. So today I've come to share 10 ideas for how to fill an empty sketchbook, hoping that by having a well-defined purpose, we can harness our creative potential to its fullest.

1. With drawings

Okay. I know you probably rolled your eyes when you read that title, but hold on. Sure, a sketchbook is essentially for drawing, but where do you get the inspiration to choose what to draw?

One way to get started is to choose a pattern of drawings to create inside (which can even be separated into sections or pages). You can define a technique (for example, only India ink drawings), a theme (only drawings of dancing goats), a color palette, or a function (this notebook will be used only for practicing light and shadow). This way, you can still exercise your creativity, but you won't be so free that you feel overwhelmed by indecision.

Example of color, technique, and/or theme choice

2. With dreams

I don't know if you've heard that dreams are the deepest manifestations of our unconscious. The things we dream about can contain hidden messages about how we feel or what we truly want.

According to psychology studies, everyone dreams while they're asleep—and dreams all the time. What happens is that as soon as we wake up and start thinking about other things, we end up forgetting or repressing that dream, precisely because it talks about something our conscious mind doesn't want to know.

There are a few seconds, however, when we remember what we dreamed. This is the stage where we're half-asleep, half-awake. They say that if we practice writing down our dreams every day, over time we'll remember them more easily and in greater detail, making it possible to observe patterns and try to figure out what they mean.

After writing in your phone's notepad in a nearly incomprehensible, sleepy grammar, a different way to record these dreams is to create an illustrated journal using your sketchbook. Besides having something almost therapeutic to do every day, you kind of create the theme of the drawings by doing something incredible: sleeping.

3. With goals

You've probably heard of " bullet journals ," right? They serve as a record of anything you want to track in your life: it could be your mood, health, joys, important dates, or things you want to do.

It's common for the pages to be lightly drawn, but how about taking it to the next level and creating a super illustrated bullet journal? For page inspiration, check out our Pinterest board!

Example of the month's opening page

4. With recipes

5. With yourself

A little piece of memory.

6. With collages

7. With friends

8. With words

9. With memories

10. With what you like

"If sadness

If the longing

Suddenly they come

I remember the things I love and then

I feel good again!"

With love,
Re