If I open a sketchbook and have absolutely no idea what to draw, I do not wait for a clever concept. I draw the nearest thing that gives me something to observe. That might be my hand, a coffee mug, a shoe on the floor, a plant, the view through a window, or somebody sitting nearby.
The subject can be ordinary. What makes the page interesting is what I decide to notice about it.
Below are 50 sketchbook ideas I can actually imagine using, followed by a few ways to turn one simple subject into an entire page instead of constantly searching for something new to draw.
If You Need Something to Draw Right Now
If you do not want to scroll through all 50 ideas yet, I would start with one of these:
- your non-drawing hand
- the shoes you are wearing
- a mug with its shadow
- one houseplant
- the view through the nearest window
- the contents of your pocket or bag
- a person looking at their phone
- one object drawn from three angles
- a five-minute self-portrait
- whatever is casting the strongest shadow near you
Pick one before your brain has time to reject all of them.
If none of those work, my broader drawing ideas collection has many more directions to explore.
People and Everyday Life
People are useful sketchbook subjects because I do not need a formal pose. Ordinary actions often give me more interesting shapes than someone sitting perfectly still for a portrait.
- Your hand in three positions. Open it, make a loose fist, then hold an object.
- Your shoes exactly where they are. Do not arrange them first.
- A quick self-portrait. Use a mirror and give yourself ten minutes.
- Someone looking at a phone. Focus on the curve of the back and direction of the head.
- Five tiny facial expressions. Keep each one only a few inches wide.
- A person walking from memory. Concentrate on the direction of the body rather than clothing details.
- The contents of your pocket or bag. Lay everything out and draw the collection.
- Your breakfast or lunch. Draw it before you eat it, or afterward from memory.
- Your bed exactly as you left it. The folds create a good value and line exercise.
- Quick gestures of people nearby. Give yourself 30 seconds to two minutes for each.
If moving figures feel too difficult, I start with posture rather than anatomy. One line showing the main direction of the pose can tell me what the rest of the drawing needs to do.
Objects That Are More Interesting Than They Look
I like everyday objects because they remove the pressure to create an important piece of art. They also contain useful drawing problems such as perspective, ellipses, reflections, texture, and cast shadows.
- A coffee mug and its shadow. Pay as much attention to the shadow shape as the mug.
- Keys, coins, screws, or another small collection. Let objects overlap.
- A chair reduced to large shapes. Ignore decorative details.
- A crumpled paper bag. Look for large planes of light and dark.
- A pair of glasses from above. Notice how the circles become distorted by perspective.
- A fruit or vegetable cut open. Compare the outside shape with the interior.
- Three objects arranged from small to large. Use the size change as the composition.
- A transparent bottle. Draw both the container and the distorted shapes visible through it.
- An old tool, camera, watch, or piece of hardware. Look for mechanical details and worn surfaces.
- The same object from the front, side, and back. Keep all three drawings on one page.
Nature and Animal Sketchbook Ideas
Natural subjects are useful because they rarely conform perfectly to the symbols I have in my head. One leaf is not shaped exactly like another. Birds change posture constantly. Stones, shells, branches, and seedpods are full of irregularities.
- A leaf with torn edges. Do not automatically make it symmetrical.
- A houseplant viewed from below. Let leaves overlap heavily.
- The same flower at several stages. Draw the bud, open flower, and fading flower together.
- The silhouette of one tree. Ignore individual leaves and concentrate on the overall shape.
- A shell, stone, feather, or seedpod. Make a larger-than-life study of the texture.
- Your pet sleeping. Sleeping animals give you more time to observe.
- Five quick bird shapes. Focus on posture rather than feathers.
- One animal from several reference angles. Compare how its major forms change.
- The shadow pattern across grass or leaves. Draw the dark shapes instead of outlining every plant.
- A tiny landscape using three values. Use only light, middle value, and dark.
When I sketch animals, I am usually more interested in weight and posture first than surface detail. If animals are what you want to concentrate on, my animal drawing guide takes that subject much further.
Draw the Place You Are Already In
I do not need to travel somewhere spectacular to make a sketchbook page about place. A bedroom, parking lot, coffee shop, backyard, street corner, or waiting room contains enough information.
- The view through a window. Let the window itself frame the composition.
- One corner of the room. Include where the wall meets the floor and ceiling.
- A doorway or storefront. Concentrate on the large rectangular relationships.
- A row of rooftops or windows. Look for repetition with small differences.
- A park bench and the space around it. Include enough background to make it feel like a place.
- A street scene using only five large shapes. Simplify aggressively.
- A place you visited recently. Draw it from your own photograph after returning home.
- A map of today’s walk. It does not need to be geographically accurate.
- The clouds and horizon. Record one particular moment before the sky changes.
- The same scene twice. Draw it in the morning and again later in the day.
When You Want to Invent Something Instead
Observation is not the only thing I use a sketchbook for. Some pages exist simply to see what happens when I connect ideas that normally would not belong together.
- Combine two animals into one creature. Decide which anatomy comes from each.
- Redesign an ordinary object for another planet. Start with something boring like a toaster or chair.
- Fill a page with overlapping organic shapes. Turn some of the intersections into forms.
- Draw what a sound might look like. Use line, density, rhythm, and shape instead of illustrating its source.
- Draw without lifting the pen. Let the line travel through the entire subject.
- Use your non-dominant hand. Draw something you already know well.
- Build a page from one repeated mark. Change its scale, direction, and spacing.
- Start with a random scribble. Find an image inside it instead of planning first.
- Invent a plant and label its parts. Give each strange feature a purpose.
- Turn your room into a landscape. Make pillows into mountains, furniture into cliffs, or carpet into fields.
If I specifically want randomness rather than observational practice, I use drawing prompts or random themes to draw rather than expecting every sketchbook page to begin with a fully formed idea.
One Subject Can Fill the Whole Page
One thing that helped my sketchbooks enormously was realizing that I do not need six unrelated ideas to fill six empty areas.
One object is enough.
If I choose a shoe, for example, I can:
- draw the whole shoe small
- rotate it and draw the side
- crop closely into the laces
- draw only the shadow
- draw the negative space around it
- make one version with pen
- draw it again without looking at the earlier studies
- add notes about what I noticed
The page becomes a study rather than a collection of unrelated little drawings.
If the Subject Feels Boring, Change the Rule
I do not always need a more exciting subject. Sometimes I only need a different constraint.
Take the same mug, hand, leaf, shoe, or plant and try one of these:
- give yourself two minutes
- draw without using an eraser
- use only straight lines
- draw only the dark shapes
- make the subject fill the entire page
- draw it tiny
- use only one continuous line
- draw it from memory after observing it for one minute
- use your non-dominant hand
Changing the rule can make an ordinary subject unfamiliar again.
Non-dominant hand drawing is one of the more extreme versions of this because it removes a lot of the control I normally take for granted.
Choose the Idea Based on What You Want to Practice
When I am deliberately practicing rather than simply filling a page, I let the skill choose the subject.
For proportion: hands, shoes, faces, tools, or furniture give me shapes that are easy to compare.
For movement: people walking, animals, birds, or quick gestures work better than still objects.
For value: a mug under a strong lamp, folded fabric, a plant near a window, or a simple still life gives me clear light and shadow.
For perspective: chairs, tables, books, rooms, streets, and buildings make the spatial problem obvious.
For texture: feathers, tree bark, crumpled paper, stone, fabric, fur, or old metal give me surfaces to interpret with marks.
I use analytical drawing when I want to break one of those problems apart rather than make the page look finished.
Let the Material Give You the Idea
Sometimes I reverse the process and choose the material before the subject.
A soft graphite pencil makes me want to work with broad dark shapes. A ballpoint pen makes me think about visible hatching and layered lines. A brush changes how I think about edges. An unfamiliar surface makes me pay attention to texture.
A few material-led page ideas:
- fill one page with pressure tests from a single pencil
- make a ballpoint drawing using only hatching
- paint several watercolor shapes and draw into them after they dry
- use one colored pencil for an entire page
- fill a page with different kinds of marks rather than recognizable objects
That last exercise connects well with my guide to mark making and materiality, where the mark itself becomes part of what I am studying.
Make a Short Series Instead of Finding a New Idea Every Day
If I want to keep drawing for several days, I would rather create a small series than start over from zero every morning.
I might spend a week:
- drawing one pair of shoes each day
- recording the view through the same window
- drawing only birds
- making pages based on shadows
- using the same pen for every drawing
- sketching one plant as it changes
- drawing one everyday object from a new angle each day
Repetition usually makes me notice more, not less.
If you want more structure around that idea, use my sketchbook challenge ideas. If you would rather choose one unifying subject, sketchbook theme ideas takes a different approach.
Put Words on the Page Too
A sketchbook does not need to contain only drawings.
I may write:
- where I was
- the date and time
- what the weather felt like
- what material I used
- what was difficult to draw
- something I want to try again
- a question about the subject
- a color I noticed
- a short memory connected with the drawing
That can turn an ordinary little sketch into something I remember much more clearly later.
You Can Leave a Sketchbook Page Unfinished
I do not think every page needs a focal point, balanced layout, finished rendering, or neat border.
A working sketchbook can contain false starts, abandoned drawings, test marks, notes in the margins, repeated subjects, and empty areas.
That is part of what makes it useful.
If fear of spoiling a page is stopping you from using the book, my article on why drawing is imperfect goes deeper into letting the process remain visible.
When You Want a Huge List Instead
Sometimes I am not looking for a study, theme, or practice goal. I just want something entertaining to draw.
For that, use my list of 100 easy things to draw when you’re bored. It is intentionally broader than this page.
The difference is that I use the ideas here specifically as material for a sketchbook: subjects I can repeat, annotate, study, alter, and build into pages rather than simply drawing once and moving on.
Start With the First Thing That Is Available
If you are still asking what you should draw in your sketchbook, look around before opening another list.
Choose the nearest object that has an interesting shape, shadow, texture, or angle.
Give yourself five minutes.
Then draw it again differently.
That second drawing is often where the sketchbook actually begins.