Learn to draw dogs in colored pencil, following this step by step tutorial by artist Janet Griffin-Scott. Janet takes you through the process of designing the dog portrait and building layers of colored pencil to create rich, lifelike textures. Draw a Dog in Colored Pencil

While I keep intending to make my sketchbooks just for drawing and keep other notes separate, it never works out that way. In no time it's full of scribbled quotes from the whatever book I'm reading (currently, How Philosophy Can Save Your Life by Marietta McCarty), notes about art history, postcards from the art gallery and various newspaper clippings.

For me creativity is very much a holistic process. Reading from all sorts of sources, as well as viewing art, and indeed life experiences, are inspiring, and find expression in text as well as images. So this approach works pretty well for me, even if my sketchbook does end up looking like a porcupine, with all the bits of paper sticking out of it. I guess it's kind of like an analogue Tumblr or Evernote account, only with infinite bandwidth.

So what's really in your sketchbook? Pristine pencil, or porcupine? Own up in the comments!

Related Reading:
Thumbnail Sketching in your sketchbook
Inspirational Quotations on Drawing
Adhesives for scrapbooks (and sketchbooks)

Here's an easy lesson in drawing from life - sketch a piece of fruit in pencil. Drawing from life is the best way to develop confidence and more importantly, develop your own style - not slavishly copying a photograph or someone else's art. This easy beginner lesson is ideal for people who claim they "can only draw stick figures", and it's a great warm-up or refresher for more experienced artists, too. Try an easy drawing lesson

Structure and anatomy are topics I constantly return to - and once again today, while searching for an image, found what should have been a really nice celebrity portrait, spoiled by the melted-plastic-doll effect. It happens when you've gone straight for the detail, without using any kind of structure. Variations of tone and slight errors in placement make it look as though the subject is a plastic model - no bones, just skin - and left too long in the hot sun, and undoes all that careful detail. Good realist artists might not use drawn structure, but they are able to do so, so can visualize it even if they don't draw the lines - and they know their anatomy. They can take a step back and look at the drawing, identify the key planes and look for danger areas. They'll recognize inconsistent perspective, misaligned features or pencil marks or lighting effects that translate to blemishes or distortion.

The solution? Practice sketching faces from life. Know the proportions of the face and how to use these when drawing from life, and of course, study the anatomy of the face.

Image: Sketch in progress (c) Ed Hall, licensed to About.com, Inc.