Sketchbook
This is a great project to keep for the "breadth" part of your future AP Art Portfolio 
One needs to learn, practice, and live by the rules before they can effectively bend, twist and break the rules! 
Art I and II taught skills and technique, this is your opportunity take what you learned and start to experiment and develop your own voice/ style!!!  
Tutorials and Fun Ideas for your sketchbook.  
Watercolor / gouache/ ink/ colored pencil tutorial 
​String and Ink to make abstract shapes
Click on the button above to download a word document.   Once open click on "enable editing" to clean up the jumbled view and print. 
​The sketchbook” you receive should be your “new best friend”. You need to carry it with you every day, everywhere! Open it up first thing in the morning and last thing at night and many times in between.  Draw in it, write in it, scribble in it, paint in it, glue things into it, cut the pages, tear the pages, change the way it looks to make it look like your own book..  At the end of the year it should reflect YOU and your experiences throughout the year.  Work in your sketchbook is an ongoing process that will help you make informed and critical decisions about the progress of your work. Your sketchbook is the perfect place to try a variety of concepts and techniques as you develop your own voice and style. 

1.  Sketchbook provides regular practice!
2.  Sketchbook gives you the opportunity to experiment!
3. Sketchbook helps you to develop your own voice, style and or technique!  

Keep up with the work in your sketchbook and avoid a disastrous snowball effect!!!! 
Metaphorically, a snowball effect is a process that starts from an initial state of small significance and builds upon itself, becoming larger (graver, more serious), and also perhaps potentially dangerous or disastrous (a vicious circle, a "spiral of decline").

6 Art Exploration sheets need to be glued into your sketchbook each quarter.  

Try recreating the technique you like on the next page :-)

These "blue" sheets are designed to help you generate ideas for your experimation in your sketchbook!  

The Blue sheets count has half of a sketchbook page if you glue them in :-)
20 new sketchbook pages due each quarter. 

I need to see exerimentation and exploration of techniques, mediums and ideas!!! 
RULES for working in your sketchbook...
  • Do not make “perfect” drawings.  Make imperfect drawings; make mistakes; make false starts.  Let your hand follow your feelings not what your brain is telling you to do.
  • Always fill the page you are working on.  Go off the edges whenever possible.  Do not make dinky little drawings in the center of the page.  Make every square inch count for something.  
  • Do not start something and abandon it.  Go back later, change it, and make it into something else.  Being able to rescue bad beginnings is the sign of a truly creative mind.
  • Always finish what you start no matter how much you don’t like it.  
  • Put the date on every page you finish.
  • AP STUDENTS.... DO NOT DRAW FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, magazines, etc. without changing the composition...  copying published photographs or the work of other artists for duplication is plagiarism.  Starting now, this will matter, for the rest of your art career … get used to it.  Take your own photos, change the composition, Draw from observation - things you see in the world.  Learn to translate the dynamic 3D world into a 2D format. 
  • Your sketch book should be twice as thick as it was when you got it.
  • No cute, pretty, precious, adorable, or trite images.  This is a college level art class, not a recreation program to make pretty picture to hang in your house.  Expect your ideas about what makes good art to be challenged.
  • Don’t be boring with your work.  Challenge us! Challenge yourself!
  • Avoid showing your work to other unless you know they are going to understand what you are trying to do in your sketchbook.  You don’t need negative feedback when you are trying out new ideas or experimenting.  This is a place for risk taking.  Don’t invite criticism unless you are confident that it won’t derail your free spirit.

What to do in your sketchbook....
  • Draw, draw, draw, paint, paint, paint, paint, draw, collage…
  • Use pencils, pens, crayons, sticks, charcoal, burnt matches, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, fingers, markers, coffee… basically anything that will make a mark.  You have the power to make the mark.
  • Draw what you SEE in the world.  No copying compositions from published images.  You need to learn to draw without crutch of someone else’s composition or flattening of space.  
  • Use gesture, line, and value in your drawings.  Try to create a sense of light and depth in your images.
  • Use the principles and elements.
  • Glue stuff into your sketchbook… ticket stubs, gum wrappers, tin foil, lace, lists, receipts, sand, leaves, twigs, pebbles, shells, earrings, shoe laces, whatever.  Make a collage with the stuff.  Add these things to pages that you started but don’t like.  Let your imagination go wild.
  • Build the pages up by layering things, paint on top of collage, newspaper, and drawing, and attach pieces of fabric and photographs and paint over parts of them.  
  • Express yourself!  Work to develop mastery in concept, composition, and execution of your ideas.
  • Make decisions about what you do based on how things look.  Go for the tough look, not the easy solution.  Say something important about the word you live in.  
  • Take a news story and interpret it visually, use abstraction to express an idea.  Play around with geometric and organic forms, interlocking and overlapping to create an interesting composition.  Use color to finish the work.
  • Make at least 100 gesture drawings from observation of the figure.
  • Make at least 25 contour drawings from observation of anything around you.  Remember to use the whole page!  Fill the space behind the objects you draw.  Make it count
  • Make a simple contour drawing of an arrangement of objects.  Repeat the drawing four times.  Explore different color schemes in each of the four drawings.  Write about how the color changes the feeling in each image.
  • Write about your work.  Write about what you like about a drawing, what you don’t like about it.  Write about your hopes for your artwork.  Write about why you like to make art.
  • Write about how your artwork could impact another’s thinking or feeling.  Write about what you want to say with your artwork.  And what it means to you in the larger sense.  
  • Create a self-portrait using distortion, or cubism, or impressionism or minimalism or pop.  
  • Create a drawing of the interior of your room but add collage elements for the lamps, and furniture.  
  • Research to understand the stylistic tendencies of other artists and movements.  Record, paste in pictures of what you find.  Write about it.  Why do you like it / choose it?   
  • Do a drawing of an unusual interior… like looking inside a closet, cabinet, refrigerator, inside your car…  
  • Combine photocopied body parts with anatomical drawings.
  • Work with analogous or monochromatic or complementary color schemes.
  • Define art vocabulary visually or with words.
  • Select an artist that appeals to you. Create a shoe that is drawn using the style of your chosen artist. I should be able to tell what artist you choose, just by looking at your drawing. Begin drawing from life and then go wild. Use your creativity. Example: Picasso, bright colors, wacky laces or Van Gogh, Subtle colors, pattern in swirls. Create an interesting composition.
  • Create a drawing that utilizes mixed media. Do not overwhelm the drawing. Be graceful with your media and allow it to direct you to the drawing.
  • Create a drawing that utilizes strong contrast. Use media of choice.
  • Draw how you feel today.
  • Lastly, this experience should be for your growth as an art student, as a person who values art as a means of expression.  Keep it for yourself so that you will feel free to work without judgment.  Remember this is an ongoing process that uses informed and critical decision making to develop ideas.
  • Just simply draw from observation… sit in a park, take a walk in the woods, people watch…