Last Updated on January 23, 2026 by Dee
There’s nothing quite as intimidating as a fresh sketchbook. All those beautiful blank pages, waiting to be filled… and suddenly your mind goes completely empty. What do you even draw?
Sketchbook prompts are the answer. They take the pressure off by giving you a starting point—a nudge that gets your pencil moving without the paralysis of infinite choice.
I’ve compiled over 100 sketchbook prompts organised by theme, plus tips for creating those gorgeous sketchbook spreads you see on Pinterest. And because sometimes you just need a head start, I’ve included 8 free printable drawing templates you can trace, reference, or paste directly into your sketchbook.
Table of Contents
How to Use Sketchbook Prompts
There’s no right or wrong way to use prompts, but here are a few approaches that work well:
Pick randomly. Close your eyes, point at the list, and draw whatever you land on. This removes overthinking entirely and forces you to work with whatever you get.
Work through themes. Spend a week on food drawings, then a week on nature, then a week on portraits. Themed practice builds skills faster than scattered subjects.
Use them as warm-ups. Before tackling a bigger project, spend ten minutes on a quick prompt sketch. It loosens up your hand and mind.
Fill awkward gaps. Got a weird empty corner on a page? A quick prompt sketch fills it beautifully without requiring much thought.
The goal isn’t perfection—it’s filling pages. A messy, experimental sketchbook is far more valuable than a pristine empty one.
Watch this video 👇🏻 for even more watercolor inspo!
Art Prompts Ideas: Animals
Animals are endlessly fun to draw and offer so much variety in shapes, textures, and personalities.
Pets and domestic animals:
Draw your own pet in three different poses. Sketch a sleeping cat curled into a perfect circle. Draw a dog’s face focusing just on the eyes and nose. Capture a goldfish in its bowl with light refracting through the water.
Wild animals:
A fox sitting with its fluffy tail wrapped around its feet. An owl with detailed feather patterns. A bear’s face with that distinctive snout shape. A deer mid-leap or peacefully grazing.
Small creatures:
Bees on flowers. Butterflies with symmetrical wing patterns. A snail with its spiral shell. Ladybirds clustered on a leaf. A dragonfly with transparent wings.
Birds:
A robin on a winter branch. Flamingos standing in water. A peacock with its tail fanned out. Tiny sparrows huddled together. An eagle in flight.
For more animal drawing inspiration, check out my 50+ cute animal pencil drawings post.
Sketchbook Pages Inspiration: Botanicals
Flowers, plants, and botanical elements create some of the most beautiful sketchbook pages. They’re forgiving subjects too—nature isn’t perfectly symmetrical, so your drawings don’t need to be either.
Flowers to sketch:
A single rose from bud to full bloom across your page. Wildflowers in a loose, scattered arrangement. Pressed flower studies with labels like a Victorian botanist. Sunflowers at different stages of opening. A lavender sprig with individual flower details.
Leaves and foliage:
A monstera leaf filling most of a page. Autumn leaves in various colours and stages of decay. Fern fronds with their repeating patterns. Eucalyptus branches with those beautiful blue-green tones. Palm fronds for a tropical vibe.
Plants and gardens:
Potted succulents in different varieties. A cactus collection. Herbs in terracotta pots. Climbing ivy or trailing pothos. A window box overflowing with flowers.
My 150+ doodle art flowers post has loads more floral inspiration if you want to dive deeper.
Cool Sketchbook Pages: Food and Drinks
Food illustration makes for incredibly satisfying sketchbook pages. The colours are delicious, the shapes are fun, and there’s something joyful about drawing things you love to eat.
Breakfast spreads:
A full English breakfast with all the components. Pancake stacks with dripping syrup. A croissant with flaky layers visible. Eggs prepared different ways across a page. Your morning coffee ritual.
Sweet treats:
A cupcake collection with different frosting styles. Doughnuts in all their glazed glory. Ice cream cones—waffle and regular. A slice of layered cake. Macarons in a rainbow of colours.
Savoury subjects:
Pizza slice with stretchy cheese. Ramen bowl from above with all the toppings visible. A burger deconstructed layer by layer. Sushi arranged on a plate. Tacos with fillings spilling out.
Fruits and vegetables:
Citrus slices showing the inner segments. A watermelon wedge. Strawberries with their seeds detailed. Avocado halves. A vegetable medley from your fridge.
Sketch Book Prompts: Nature and Landscapes
Nature prompts work whether you’re drawing from life outdoors or working from imagination and reference photos at your desk.
Sky and weather:
Cloud studies—cumulus, cirrus, storm clouds. A sunset gradient across your page. Rain falling on a window. Lightning bolts. The moon in its different phases.
Landscapes:
Mountains layered from dark foreground to pale distance. A winding path disappearing into trees. Rolling hills with a single tree. A beach scene with waves and sand. A forest clearing with dappled light.
Water:
Ocean waves crashing. A calm lake reflecting trees. A waterfall. Raindrops creating ripples. A stream with rocks and flowing water.
Seasons:
The same tree drawn in spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Snowflakes—each one unique. Autumn leaves falling. Spring blossoms. Summer sunshine.
For seasonal ideas, my 150 winter things to draw and 70 fall things to draw posts have loads more prompts.
Sketchbook Spread Ideas: Everyday Objects
Some of the best sketchbook pages feature ordinary things. Drawing everyday objects trains your eye to see beauty in the mundane.
Your desk or workspace:
Your pencil pot with all its contents. Scissors, tape, and paper clips. Your phone and headphones. A stack of books with readable spines. Your keyboard from an interesting angle.
Kitchen items:
A teapot and cup. Cooking utensils in a jar. Your favourite mug. A fruit bowl. Vintage kitchen scales.
Personal items:
Your keys and keychain. Glasses or sunglasses. Your wallet and its contents. Jewellery laid out. Your trainers with all their details.
Cosy objects:
A lit candle with melting wax. A stack of blankets. Fairy lights tangled. A book open with pages fanned. A houseplant in its pot.
Messy Sketchbook Pages: Experimental Prompts
Not every page needs to be pretty. Some of the most valuable sketchbook work is messy, experimental, and “ugly.” These prompts embrace that chaos.
Blind contour drawings:
Draw your hand without looking at the paper. Sketch your face in a mirror without lifting your pencil. Draw a plant using only continuous lines. The results are always wonky and always wonderful.
Speed sketches:
Set a timer for 30 seconds and draw as much as you can. Fill a page with one-minute gesture drawings. Capture moving subjects—people walking, pets playing.
Material experiments:
Draw with your non-dominant hand. Use a stick dipped in ink. Try drawing with a nearly-dead pen. Combine pencil and watercolour on the same page.
Pattern and texture:
Fill a page with different hatching styles. Draw the same shape using ten different textures. Create a sampler of pattern ideas. Experiment with pressure—light to dark across a page.
Sketch Book Page Ideas: People and Portraits
Drawing people can feel intimidating, but breaking it down into smaller elements makes it approachable.
Facial features:
A page of different eye shapes and expressions. Lips from various angles. Noses—button, Roman, upturned. Ears (the forgotten feature). Eyebrows expressing different emotions.
Hair studies:
Curly, straight, wavy, braided. Different hairstyles from the same angle. Hair blowing in wind. Updos and ponytails. The way light catches different hair textures.
Hands:
Your own hand in five positions. Hands holding objects—cups, phones, flowers. Hands making gestures. Baby hands versus adult hands. Hands at rest.
Figure work:
Silhouettes of people in different poses. Quick gesture drawings from reference photos. People sitting on benches. Figures walking away from you.
My female pose reference guide has free templates to help you practice figures.
Artbook Ideas: Themed Spread Inspiration
Creating cohesive themed spreads makes your sketchbook feel more intentional and is incredibly satisfying to flip through later.
Collection spreads:
30 different mugs. Every type of leaf you can find. Shells organised by size. Buttons from your collection. Vintage keys.
Study pages:
One subject drawn from multiple angles. The same flower at different stages. A colour study of one object. Light and shadow on a single form.
Daily life spreads:
Everything you ate today. Objects from your morning routine. Items from your bag. Things on your bedside table. Your outfit deconstructed.
Mood and memory:
Draw your current mood as abstract shapes. Sketch a childhood memory. Illustrate a song lyric. Draw your happy place. Capture a dream before you forget it.
Best Supplies for Your Sketchbook
The best sketchbook is the one you’ll actually use, but here are some supplies that make the experience more enjoyable.
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For pencils, a range of grades lets you achieve different effects. The Staedtler graphite pencils (2H-6B) cover everything from light sketching to deep shading. For an all-in-one kit, the KALOUR 76 Drawing Sketching Kit is brilliant for beginners.
Fine liner pens add lovely crisp details. The Mogyann Drawing Pens come in multiple sizes and are perfect for outlining and adding definition.
Choose a sketchbook with paper thick enough to handle your medium. For pencil work, most papers work fine, but if you want to add watercolour or markers, look for heavier weight pages.
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Tips for Filling Your Sketchbook Faster
If you’re struggling to make progress through your sketchbook, try these approaches:
Lower your standards. Seriously. Give yourself permission to make ugly pages. Not everything needs to be Instagram-worthy. The goal is practice, not perfection.
Draw small. You don’t have to fill entire pages with single drawings. Tiny thumbnails, collections of small objects, or grids of quick sketches fill pages fast and look great.
Set a daily minimum. Even five minutes of sketching daily adds up. One small drawing per day means 365 drawings in a year.
Use templates. There’s no shame in tracing or using references. The templates below give you a starting point when you’re stuck.
Date your pages. Seeing progress over time is incredibly motivating. A dated sketchbook becomes a record of your artistic journey.
For more ideas on building a daily practice, my how to start a daily sketchbook post has loads of helpful tips.
What’s Inside the 8 Free Drawing Templates
Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll get in this free 8-page printable template set. Each page has clean black outlines on white paper—perfect for tracing into your sketchbook, using as drawing reference, or even pasting directly onto pages.
The templates include:
- Cute animals (sleeping cat, bunny, bird)
- Flower bouquet with roses and daisies
- Cosy coffee cup with steam
- Beautiful detailed butterfly
- Simple portrait/face outline
- Cosy objects (books, candle, plant)
- Cute food (cupcake, cake, fruit)
- Nature scene (mountains, tree, clouds)
Grab the Free Printable Drawing Templates HERE (below)!
Every freebie and tutorial on Artsydee is made with love (and plenty of coffee!) ☕ If you’d like to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee here → ko-fi.com/artsydee
Now Go Fill Those Pages!
You’ve got 100+ prompts and 8 free templates—no more excuses for empty sketchbooks! Remember, the best artists aren’t the ones with natural talent; they’re the ones who fill sketchbook after sketchbook with practice.
Pick a prompt from this list that catches your eye and start today. Don’t overthink it. The worst that happens is you don’t love the result, and even “bad” sketches teach you something.
I’d love to see your sketchbook pages! Tag me on Instagram or Pinterest if you use these prompts or templates.
Happy sketching! ✏️
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