The Sketchbook Project

The Sketchbook Project offers other Challenges, from free weekly creative prompts to medium-specific swaps and exchanges. Get some inspiration to create and check out some of our past and current projects below. You’ll see the projects that you can currently join towards the top of the page. If you’re a business interested in sponsoring a free project, get in touch!

Open Challenges

Past Challenges

- Participants: 5627
- Sign up by: October 31, 2019
- Postmark by: March 05, 2020
- Themes: Giant Dreams, A Huge Mistake, Fill me with big moments, Long form, Sketchbooks for giants, Epic, Sky's the limit, Around the world, Gigantic Sights, An odyssey
The Tiny Sketchbook Project 2

View Challenge
- Participants: 5502
- Sign up by: October 31, 2018
- Postmark by: February 01, 2019
- Themes: Pocket-sized memories, Tiny islands, A very short way home, Little maps, Microscopic moments, I shrunk the..., Small secrets, Trivial retrospectives, Narrow passageways, Sketchbooks for rats
The Tiny Sketchbook Project Vol 1

View Challenge
- Participants: 5101
- Sign up by: January 05, 2018
- Postmark by: April 30, 2018
- Themes: underwater, This is not what it seems, Textures, Lines and Graphics, Long Stories with Short Endings, A Comic Book Ending, Connections, People I Wish I Knew, No Worries, Tacos, Kaleartean 2017, Bonnaroo
The Sketchbook Project 2018

Sign up, receive a blank sketchbook, fill it up and submit it to become part of the world's largest collection of sketchbooks. Your book will become part of Brooklyn Art Library's permanent collection and travel as part…
View Challenge
- Participants: 105
- Sign up by: October 30, 2016
- Postmark by: November 15, 2016
- Theme: Tiny Diagrams
Tiny Diagrams

Share your work internationally, build your personal art collection, and network with artists from around the world with our latest Print Exchange! To participate, simply register online and create an edition of eleven…
View Challenge
- Participants: 1017
- Sign up by: June 01, 2016
- Postmark by: July 06, 2016
- Theme: The Great American Sketching Swap
The Great American Sketching Swap

We are hitting the road for a cross-country adventure! Join us and Faber-Castell as we travel coast to coast bringing the good gospel of sketchbooks with us. Our Mobile Library is full of stories, sketches, photographs,…
View Challenge
- Participants: 196
- Sign up by: May 06, 2016
- Postmark by: July 07, 2016
- Theme: Lightning Bolts Under the Night Sky
Lighting Bolts Under The Night Sky

Create 11 prints, receive 10 prints from artists all over the globe! INTRODUCING our Winter Print Exchange. Create 11 5x7 prints on the theme 'Lightning Bolts Under The Night Sky' and send them back to us. We will swap…
View Challenge
- Participants: 279/300
- Sign up by: November 08, 2015
- Postmark by: January 05, 2016
- Theme: Message From a Future Self
Fiction Project 2015

With our latest installment of The Fiction Project, we're challenging writers near and far to fill each page with "A Message From a Future Self."

Pen a memoir from the perspective of your future alter ego, craft an…
View Challenge
- Participants: 371
- Sign up by: August 20, 2015
- Postmark by: September 15, 2015
- Theme: Greetings From A Distant Land
2015 Print Exchange - Greetings From A Distant Land

Create 11 prints, receive 10 prints from artists all over the globe! INTRODUCING our 2015 Print Exchange. Create 11 5x7 prints on the theme 'Greetings From A Distant Land' and send them back to us. We will swap 10 of…
View Challenge
- Sign up by: July 18, 2015
- Submit By: July 18, 2015
- Theme: Lost Love
The Lost Love Project

Fate has a way of connecting us through the times. Whether its time, oceans or lands between us. Lost love will always find a way. Inspired by the unconventional story of lost love and wanderlust, we have partnered with…
View Challenge
- Sign up by: October 16, 2014
- Postmark by: December 15, 2014
- Theme: Just a second...
The Print Exchange - Just a Second

Twice a year, we invite 500 printmakers to join our worldwide print exchange. This time the theme is "Just a second..." Each participant will create an edition of twelve prints to submit and will receive ten unique…
View Challenge
- Sign up by: January 27, 2016
- Postmark by: March 01, 2016
- Theme: Self Portrait
Pen Pal Painting Exchange - Self Portrait

With the Pen Pal Painting Exchange, you'll create a painting using the theme Self Portrait. Once finished, you'll send your painting to us and we will swap it with the completed work of another artist. Your Painting Pen…
View Challenge
- Participants: 267/1000
- Sign up by: June 27, 2014
- Postmark by: June 27, 2014
- Theme: Found material collage
Challenge Accepted!

For this week's challenge, we're asking you to document a snippet of your daily commute, e.g. draw, photograph or write.
Sign up and use hashtag #CAmycommute when sharing what you made. You can upload your submission…
View Challenge
- Participants: 1000/1000
- Sign up by: March 03, 2014
- Postmark by: March 19, 2014
- Theme: In the Shadows
The "Dreadful" Project

With The “Dreadful” Project, we invite you to set your nightmares to paper. Sign up and we’ll mail you the official “Dreadful” Project card, to sketch and narrate a little piece of your own horror tale, inspired by the…
View Challenge
- Participants: 499/500
- Sign up by: March 31, 2014
- Postmark by: April 30, 2014
- Theme: Let This Be a Sign
The Print Exchange 2014

We invite 500 printmakers to join our annual worldwide print exchange. This years theme is "Let This Be a Sign..." Each participant will create an edition of twelve prints to submit and will receive ten unique prints…
View Challenge
- Participants: 207
- Sign up by: December 20, 2013
- Postmark by: February 15, 2014
- Theme: Ampersand
The Ampersand Project

Through hundreds of works of art, The Ampersand Project will explore the ways each of us can interpret something as direct as a written symbol like the humble ampersand (&).

Being that "&" means "and," we feel like…
View Challenge
- Participants: 246/250
- Sign up by: October 05, 2013
- Postmark by: November 15, 2013
- Theme: Tell the World a Story
Fiction Project 2013

In Fiction Project, we're focusing on a specific genre of The Sketchbook Project collection by encouraging amazing story tellers to fill up a book with a work of fiction. Works of fiction inspire us by being grown from…
View Challenge
- Participants: 100/100
- Sign up by: August 01, 2013
- Postmark by: September 30, 2013
- Theme: Epics and Understatements
Verse on Paper

We're opening up this project to only 100 participants with the challenge to create books of poetry that not only contain beautiful and expressive words, but might also transform their physical book into a unique poetic…
View Challenge
- Participants: 16005
- Sign up by: November 15, 2013
- Postmark by: January 14, 2013
- Themes: Untitled, California, Northeast, Southeast, Pacific NW, Southwest, Central
The Sketchbook Project 2014

Together, thousands of creative people from around the world are forming a traveling library of artists' books.
View Challenge