Three Pencil-Sketching Ideas for Your Sketchbook
- Making To Make Happy
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
If you have been wanting to spend time with your sketchbook recently, but are perhaps finding yourself and Blank Page having a bit of a staring competition, you’ll find three pencil-sketching ideas you can try below.
I used a 2B pencil for these, but there are no real rules - just use whatever pencil you have! Along with a pencil, you might want to grab a ruler and eraser, but those are optional and hey, you do you.
Bring on the pencil-sketching ideas!...
Pssst: you can see all of these ideas (and a couple more) in action in my full video on YouTube! 👇
Scribbly Silhouettes
First up is a verrrry relaxed exercise, which should help you warm up and settle in to a calm creative state.
Think of a simple object or shape, and then scribble it onto the page. Try to only scribble in the one direction if you can, moving from side to side, and trying to create the shape as your pencil travels from top to bottom. Hopefully you'll start creating a rough silhouette of the thing you are thinking of.
This exercise is both incredibly simple and a bit tricky at the same time. It's not about perfection and it doesn't matter how accurately your scribble creates the silhouette, but limiting yourself to scribbling flat shapes can really get your brain thinking differently.
When you reduce an object down to its most basic shapes, it doesn’t always retain its identity. Sometimes it morphs. And this can be great in terms of sparking inspiration.
I recommend doing this exercise without looking at references - just picture something in your mind and then see what comes out onto the page. It can be objects, animals, people… whatever your mind reaches for that flows into your fingers. If a scribble goes a bit squiffy, and doesn’t translate well as a silhouette, either try it again or just move on to something else. As you continue, you can experiment with adding more shading on some, or changing the angles of the scribble - whatever pops into your mind.
Tip: If you have a shape in mind and want to give yourself a bit of a guideline to scribble on, try drawing some dashes first - they can mark the edges of one side, so you know where to scribble from.
I have one thing to ask of you though - please try not to judge the scribbles you make. This isn’t about getting the shapes “right” or creating a beautiful balanced page of elements - it’s about loosening up your hands and letting go of a plan. You can do it!
Ch-Ch-Changes!
Having now created a page full of scribbles, you can use them to spark ideas for this next sketchy experiment....
Remember what I said about how shadow shapes can morph into other things? Well, turn your page around to view your scribbles from different angles... look for a shape which, from a different angle, reminds you of something else.
From my scribbles, I see a possibility in the strawberry, as upside down it reminds me of an octopus with short legs!
Once you have your idea, this is what you'll do:
✏️ Sketch the basic shape of your chosen silhouette, three times across your page. These will become three stages of change.
✏️ The first stage: is a sketch of whatever your shape is starting as. For example, the silhouette I chose was a strawberry, so I'm firstly sketching a strawberry (in as much or as little detail as I like).
✏️ The second stage: is a transition sketch, some kind of bridge between the first and third. I like to sketch this stage last, as it's easier to figure out once you have the other two in place.
✏️ The third stage: is a sketch of the thing your silhouette reminded you of, that is different to the original starting point.
So, in my example, I started with a sketch of a strawberry. Then I skipped on down to the third shape on my page and sketched something like an octopus! I used the berry part of the shape to become the octopus body, and the leafy stem to become the tentacles.
Finally, I used the middle shape to become a strawberry-octopus hybrid. This one needed to have qualities from both ends of the spectrum, so I extended the leaves out further, but kept the berry still looking strawberry-like.
In the end, I wanted to add another stage in to this metamorphosis, so I drew another one - which threw off the balance of the page as a whole, but you know what, who cares?!
I think so often, we can fall into the trap of believing that our sketchbooks need to look cohesive and beautiful. They don’t. They are places for experimentation and learning, for relaxation and expansion. All of those things can be messy, or wonky, or a bit weird. And that’s definitely what this page turned out to be.
Give it a go yourself. The next time you see something, and its shape reminds you of another thing, jot it down and draw it in your sketchbook. And let me know which transformations you try!
Exploring the Angles
I’ve drawn a rough box outline on my page here but that’s optional. The first stage of this sketch is to simply draw some straight lines across the page. Pick a wonky angle that feels right and then lightly draw some lines at random intervals. For now, keep them all at that same angle. You can use both sides of the ruler, so you can easily get two lines from one ruler placement. I am just doing this by eye - so, don’t worry about making sure every line is at 45 degrees or whatever - similar is good enough!
Once you’ve got a good few lines from that angle, do a bunch of lines at a different angle, going the other way - so the lines criss cross each other. Don’t think too hard if you try this - just plop them on to the page however you like.
Place your pencil at a point on a line - it can be anywhere - and then draw a straight line downwards from it until it meets another parallel line. Then draw another vertical line next to it to create a wonky box.
Make as many wonky boxes across your page as you like! Outline the wonky boxes, so they are bolder, and add a bit of shading in the edges if you want to.
If you knock into a box that is already there, you have a choice - you can either pretend the box you're drawing now is behind the other one, and not break into the other box; or you can allow the boxes to be transparent and let the lines break across each other.
You can make all the boxes the same stylistically, or you can start varying them. I added boxes which were fully shaded. And you can add more extra guidelines on at any point, because the more boxes you make, the more ideas might spark.
For me, as I’m drawing, I go through a few different thoughts. When I started adding in the shaded boxes, it made me think that all of these boxes were windows on a block of flats - and some had their lights on inside while others were dark. Because of that thought, I couldn’t help popping a little blob with eyes into one of the “windows”, and then I drew a random plant dangling out of another.
After that I was reminded of washing hanging on a line, so for a couple of boxes, I added two pegs on the tops of them. One of the largest boxes made me think of a big wall poster, or shop window, so I drew in some bolder lines on the angles around it to create a block building.
I know this all sounds a bit random, but that’s very much the point. This sketchy exercise is all about going with whatever ideas spark as you go along. I wrote down “Windows / Washing Lines / Pictures Frames” on the bottom of the page and regardless of whether one idea worked with another, I tried them out. It doesn’t matter if the scale is inconsistent, it doesn’t matter if it becomes a bit messy. Your sketchbook pages don’t have to make sense to anyone - not even to you. Give it a go - play with some angles and see where they take you.
I hope you enjoy trying these out! If you do, please feel free to share and tag me on Instagram @gemmathepen so I can see what you create!
Keep making happy,
Gemma 💛