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

[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.

[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!