Would this forum benefit from more personal sketchbook threads? 📚 POLL

TessaW

The topic of forum sketchbooks for individual users has been brought up in another thread. Sketchbook threads, dedicated to one user's artwork and sketches, are not a common thing on this particular forum, but it has been popular on other forums and online sketchbooks are kept on other platforms like blogs and instagram.

Some of the benefits of online sketchbooks I can think of:

One dedicated place to keep your work. You can see your progress over time in one place. You could still make separate WIP posts if needed, but you'd have a sketchbook to add anything you wanted.
Help others get a better sense of your study history, your overall body of work, and therefore help them give more focused feedback to your individual needs.
History. Sketchbooks have the potential to stay active over a longer period of time. It starts feeling like a home of sorts for the owner and you can see growth and relationships form over time. You get a sense of regulars who where active in the past, but may not be active now. It adds depth to the feel of the community. The average life span of posts in the forums are currently very short.
Mental permission to post studies and sketches. Sometimes making a separate post for smaller things can feel like a big deal. If you have a sketchbook, it can become a place to post your doodles and studies, without flooding the forums. The current monthly virtual studio seems to do a good job at fulfilling this need, however.
It gives other artists ideas on the kind of things people are doing to improve their craft. When I was younger, I thought talent determined artistic ability more than anything, until I saw online sketchbooks. They gave me a clearer idea on the kind of work that goes into bettering your craft.

My theory of why sketchbooks are not popular here is because the default settings make it so that threads become difficult to view after a certain amount of posts. There may be other factors at play however. I think if more people started sketchbooks, put a link to their sketchbooks in their signature, and changed their settings so that threads are paginated, sketchbooks might take off.

What do you guys think? Would you make a sketchbook? Do you think there's a need for them? Why do think they aren't more popular here? Any thoughts appreciated!

UPDATE:

It seems like there's enough people interested, that sketchbooks could become more of a prominent thing here. I'd encourage people to start one if they think it will be enriching!

Some ideas to launch and maintain an online sketchbook:

1, Start your sketchbook. Your first post can include an overall summary of yourself and your sketchbook. Who are you? What's your history with art? What are your goals? What are you open to as far as feedback goes? Are you open to critiques or suggestions? Or is your sketchbook a no critique zone? Will you only be including certain types of work in your sketchbook, or will it be for anything and everything? You may want to encourage people to change their settings to paginate posts for better viewing experience.
2. Put a link to your sketchbook in your signature.
3. Select the sketchbook category when making your sketchbook and put a sketchbook tag on your first post. There's a place to put tags in the bottom left corner, when making or editing the first post on a thread.
4. Visit other people's sketchbooks and say hello!
5. Post as much or as little as you want. Never feel shy to return to your sketchbook after a long period of absence.
6. Post whatever you want. I've had one online sketchbook and I made it a goal to try and post any kind of art I made, even if it was butt ugly. As the years went on, I did that less, because it was too time consuming (I made a lot of butt ugly art), but I think it's encouraging for other artists to see some of the not as polished things that come out of a pursuit of art. It was also a place to post my general thoughts about art and life. If you want to just include beautiful images, that's fine too! My only caveat is that this particular forum probably wouldn't be a good fit for images with over-the-top graphic violence or sexuality- something to keep in mind!
7. If you don't get much feedback on your sketchbook- that's ok! Your sketchbook will show a history of your work and mindset and that can be very valuable to you down the road. You may have unknowingly influenced other artists for the better, even if they don't stop in to say hello.

Any other ideas for launching and maintaining an online sketchbook?

Amanda Jean

Haha, I didn't mean to open a can of worms but appreciate you taking time to dig and set this poll up. It will be interesting to see the results as they come in.

TessaW

@Amanda-Jean Lol, that's ok. I've kept a sketchbook on the conceptart forums since 2013, but it looks like those forums might have gone down permanently pretty recently. My work was never really a good fit there anyway, but it was rewarding having that sketchbook. I never thought a sketchbook would work here, but you bringing it up made me think it's worth a stab. Even if it doesn't become a thing here, I think it's worth bringing up the subject!

ArtofAleksey

This is great! I would totally be a Guinea pig too if you needed

Susan Marks

@TessaW Interesting idea. I've never done this-shared my sketchbook online. How does it work? Every time you complete a page (or a set of pages)-you upload them into a group thread? or each person has an individual thread-and maybe that's a "topic" here?

(I have a personal challenge in that I mix my sketchbook most often with my journal; all on a Procreate page in my iPad. I've never found a way to "blur" the text such that I'd feel comfortable posting it publicly-but maybe this would push me harder to find a solution).

Amanda Jean

@Susan-Marks think of it as a digital sketchbook, a place to share your progress and thoughts and for other forum visitors to view your work without having to go offsite. If people don't follow you, it acts as a kind of forum blog, you don't have to be particular about what you curate in it as much as you might in your own social media spaces. Or you can if you want to but that seems a bit redundant to me.

As for text you don't want people to see, if you're using Procreate, why not cover it up with with another image on a separate layer? Or if you set your procreate file up so that your writing is on a separate layer, hide that layer and just export the images. Simply put, you can crop, layer things, or just don't post it at all.

Chip Valecek

@TessaW I will create a new Topic Category for Sketchbooks.

Chip Valecek

I take that back, there is already one for it under Artwork. Would you all think it would be better to move it from Artwork and make it its own parent category? I don't think there is really any benefit of doing that.

TessaW

@Chip-Valecek Thanks for pointing out that it's a category- people should be taking advantage of it if they decide to make a sketchbook. I don't think you need to move it.

TessaW

It seems like there's enough people interested, that sketchbooks could become more of a prominent thing here. I'd encourage people to start one if they think it will be enriching!

Some ideas to launch and maintain an online sketchbook:

1, Start your sketchbook. Your first post can include an overall summary of yourself and your sketchbook. Who are you? What's your history with art? What are your goals? What are you open to as far as feedback goes? Are you open to critiques or suggestions? Or is your sketchbook a no critique zone? Will you only be including certain types of work in your sketchbook, or will it be for anything and everything? You may want to encourage people to change their settings to paginate posts for better viewing experience.
2. Put a link to your sketchbook in your signature.
3. Select the sketchbook category when making your sketchbook and put a sketchbook tag on your first post. There's a place to put tags in the bottom left corner, when making or editing the first post on a thread.
4. Visit other people's sketchbooks and say hello!
5. Post as much or as little as you want. Never feel shy to return to your sketchbook after a long period of absence.
6. Post whatever you want. I've had one online sketchbook and I made it a goal to try and post any kind of art I made, even if it was butt ugly. As the years went on, I did that less, because it was too time consuming (I made a lot of butt ugly art), but I think it's encouraging for other artists to see some of the not as polished things that come out of a pursuit of art. It was also a place to post my general thoughts about art and life. If you want to just include beautiful images, that's fine too! My only caveat is that this particular forum probably wouldn't be a good fit for images with over-the-top graphic violence or sexuality- something to keep in mind!
7. If you don't get much feedback on your sketchbook- that's ok! Your sketchbook will show a history of your work and mindset and that can be very valuable to you down the road. You may have unknowingly influenced other artists for the better, even if they don't stop in to say hello.

Any other ideas for launching and maintaining an online sketchbook?

TessaW

@Susan-Marks I think @Amanda-Jean summed it up pretty perfectly. She mentioned that it's like a "forum blog". I think that's a really good way to look at it. It's like an informal blog that's easier to maintain and you get the benefit of it being housed in a forum setting.

TessaW

@Chip-Valecek How would you make a post be part of the sketchbook category? Do you have to use a tag or something? It doesn't look like you can just select the category in the drop down menu when creating new a post.

Chip Valecek

@TessaW you dont see sketchbook under Art?

TessaW

@Chip-Valecek Ok, I was a little confused. It looks like on my end you can tag it as a sketchbook, but you can't actually choose it as a category went you are making a new topic. But the tag pretty much serves as the same function. I just didn't know how to use tags.

Sketchbook Tag.png

Jad Bautista

@TessaW I love this idea pretty much because i love the sense of energy from sketches compared to final pieces. I will definitely go check out this section in the forum!