Fall 2025 Sketchbook

Our most recent sketch group project.

If you aren’t in a sketch group (or art accountability group of some kind) I highly recommend it. Not only does it encourage camaraderie and support, but it also gets you trying different kinds of art, and keeping a consistent practice with built-in accountability to show your work at regular meetups.

You saw my first two sketch group projects here and here. Now onto the third!

This book was a bit different than the last two. Instead of buying the journal, we made the journal ourselves from a large sheet of fabriano¹ paper.

There also was no defined theme - everyone used their journals in a different way. My goal was to push myself outside of my comfort zone, which involved using mediums (especially collage) that I was less familiar with.

Fall 2025 - Spring 2026 Sketchbook Project

This one confused a lot of people when I showed this image in person. It is half photograph, half recreation by drawing. Below are the two original photographs so you can see the difference.

Click to enlarge. Hat on backpack. Rockefeller mausoleum.

What do you think? Did you have a favorite?

The lesson I learned:

It was hard and uncomfortable to do this book… I wanted to try new things but they felt so awkward and I wasn’t liking the end results. Eventually I just kept going. Many of the pages have first drafts underneath the final that look totally different than what I ended with. It was really useful to push myself through the discomfort, and the bad art. I discovered that I don’t love collaging, but I do really like altering/manipulating original photos. Tearing them up, redrawing parts, painting on top, etc.

A challenge for you:

Try something new, different, or bad on purpose. (This was a fun video by Danny Gregory, who you’ll hear me mention a lot.)

Tell me how it goes. Join the subscriber chat and share a photo of your new art.

What did you learn or discover?

Sincerely,
Lana

1. The Fabriano paper is available via my Blick partnership here. Please note that all Blick links here will provide me a small sales commission, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting me with your purchase! We used an off-white/cream color and dripped coffee or tea across the page before ripping to create textured backgrounds.

More of my favorite art supplies can be found here on my Blick’s Art Supplies List.

Below are the two other sketchbooks I’ve done with this group.