Making a sketch book

Joanna Wright
Oct 22, 2016
2 min read

"We should get rid of the common misconception that if you don't think you can draw then you are bad at art. Like all other subjects, art is one that can be taught and developed, and with practice you will improve."

Me being horrific at art, going into a three hour art seminar for foundations subjects of the national curriculum i was less than excited to say the least. But with our tutor reassuring us with this fact was somewhat comforting and give me confidence to know that art should not be a subject to be afraid of but to be excited to see children's creativity and progress through school.

The first thing we learnt to do was how to create a simple sketch book which children can make so that resources will be quick and cheap with them making their own books. It also allows for the children to take the books home without worry of losing money if they lose their book!

1) Starting with an A1 page, fold horizontally in half. use finger nails to create a sharp fold which will make the process easier in later steps.

2) Unfold, and use the centre fold just created to bring up the bottom half of the page to the middle and create another fold. again, use nails to sharpen the crease.

3) Repeat this with the top half of the page to fold into the centre. there should now be three folds running horizontally when the page is in portrait.

4) Fold page vertically along the centre to split page into '8 sections' and unfold.

5) Fold page back over the horizontal in the centre. Tear from the top fold (where there is a seam) down to the centre of the paper down the vertical crease.

6) Unfold the paper and re-fold down the vertical fold and now there should be a tear in the centre of the fold. push the paper from the sides together to fan out the pages and fold over all creases made and shape into a book.

To add more pages into the sketchbook another page can be repeated and then elastic banded together. "page extenders" can also be added to give writing space to the children if they want to jot down ideas. However, in the sketchbook spelling, grammar and neatness should not be sought after because this will interfere with the creativity process- and it doesn't matter if it's art!

See the sketchbook for ideas on proportion, different colouring materials and study on Banksy.