Art + doodles

25 art journal ideas, even if you think you can't draw

By the TeenExpressions team · November 9, 2026 · 6 min read

An art journal isn't a sketchbook you have to be proud of. It's a place to play with shapes, color, and images. Stick figures count. Scribbles count. A page that's just one color counts.

No-drawing-required ideas

1. Fill a page with one color using every material you own: pen, marker, crayon, highlighter.
2. Make a collage from a junk-mail flyer, a receipt, and a candy wrapper.
3. Trace your hand and fill each finger with a different pattern.
4. Draw the sound of rain using only dots and lines.
5. Make a color palette for each person in your family. No faces, just colors.
6. Write a word over and over until it turns into a texture.
7. Cut out ten words from a magazine and arrange them into a sentence.
8. Draw a map of your bedroom from above, with a legend for the important stuff.

Simple drawing experiments

1. Invent a personal symbol from one shape, one object, and one pattern.
2. Draw a mood forecast: make up weather icons for how today feels.
3. Draw your shoes without looking at the paper.
4. A four-panel comic about something small that went right today.
5. Design a stamp for a country that doesn't exist.
6. Invent a creature whose job is to solve one specific problem.
7. Draw an object at three sizes: tiny, normal, and taking up the whole page.
8. Design the cover of a book about your life so far.
9. Make a "treasure map" of an ordinary day.

Mixed-media pages

1. Glue in a ticket stub and write what happened around it.
2. Press a leaf or flower and label it like a museum display.
3. Design a playlist cover for each season.
4. Make a "curiosity menu" of things you want to learn, styled like a restaurant menu.
5. Draw the view from a window you know well, then draw what you wish was there.
6. Make a pocket from an envelope and fill it with tiny notes.
7. Turn a mistake on a page into the start of something new.
8. Design your dream hangout space, labeled with every detail.

Keep it low-pressure

If a page goes wrong, you have three options: keep going, turn the mistake into part of the design, or flip to a new page. All three are fine. The goal is to make things, not to make perfect things.