Ideas for your sketchbook

• Try out the colors of your various mediums. Label the colors.
• Paste in color combinations you find in ads, post cards.
• Simple sketches (sketch until you're bored then change subjects.
• Box in the various additions to your sketchbook like Matisse did when he sketched in Tunisia. (Matisse used rough rectangles to box in his subject when he finished sketching. The corners were rounded.)

Drawing principles - check your drawings using this list:

• Imaginary lines (If I drop an imaginary line straight down from here it's at the lip of the cup------does my drawing show this)
• Relative sizes (This foot is bigger than everything else)
• Overlapping (The figure farthest forward overlaps what? Draw from front to back)
• Geometric Forms-- (what's the general shape?)
• Negative Space (Are the negative shapes on the figure and on the drawing the same?)
• Put those silly ideas, unacceptable, raunchy ideas, ideas about society in the sketchbook. No one will see them. I once drew a 'getaway' kit that women needed to leave home: coffee pot, radio, musical instruments, clothes, shoes, toothbrush, etc.

If you have ideas appropriate to your medium, sketch those, label. (My sketchbooks are filled with prints and paintings that have not been used yet.  Someday . . . . . . . . .