Sketchbook Club: Material Explorations for Beating Creative Ruts
5 Week Class | Registration opens 2026-02-10 12:00 PM
Sketchbooks are one of the most powerful (and often underused) tools for developing drawing skills and sustaining a creative practice. This course is designed for anyone who feels stuck, unsure where to begin, or surrounded by unused sketchbooks waiting to be filled. Through regular sketchbook practice, students will build confidence, strengthen observation, and reconnect with the joy of making.
Each week introduces new drawing and art materials—such as pencil, charcoal, pastel, markers, acrylic, gouache, collage, and mixed media—along with guided exercises and creative prompts. These projects are designed to loosen up artistically, encourage experimentation, and offer practical strategies for working through creative blocks. By the end of the course, students will leave with a fuller sketchbook, a versatile toolkit of techniques, and a sustainable creative habit they can carry into everyday life.
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- What You Will Learn:
- A variety of methods that one can use to approach the creation of artwork
- How to gather different sources of inspiration and translate them into sketchbook work
- How to create art more freely within the boundaries of a sketchbook
- The basic techniques of pastel, pencil crayon, acrylic, and gouache and how to layer them all with mixed media
- Required Materials:
- Sketchbook (preferably one with mixed media paper which can handle both drawing materials and gouache/watercolour/acrylics)
- Pencil & eraser
- Scissors
- Any of the following materials (you do not need to get them all - whatever you are most comfortable creating with or are interested in trying): Charcoal, markers, oil pastels, soft pastels, conte, collaging materials, watercolours, gouache, acrylic.
- Paint brushes and palette, if wanting to use paints.
There will be some communal materials, provided by the instructor, to try out during class.
Emily Joyce
Emily is a Toronto-based painter and paintings conservator. She specializes in the study of paint materials, from traditional egg tempera and oil paints to contemporary acrylics and mediums. The crossover of art and science in her profession has allowed her an in-depth exploration of the history and techniques of painters from a range of historical time periods such as the Renaissance, Impressionism and Pop Art. These studies have inspired her classes and workshops at the TSA. Emily has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) with a minor in art History and a Master's of Art Conservation (Queen’s University), as well as a certificate in Traditional Materials, Methods of Painting and Restoration techniques through San Gemini Preservation Studies in Italy. Outside of the TSA, Emily works at Toronto Art Restoration in the west end, conserving a range of artworks from Tom Thomson landscapes to Michael Snow's Eaton Centre’s Geese.