Art Activity Idea: Trying out the Studio Series Blank Book from Barnes & Noble

Found these blank books at Barnes & Noble, and thought that they might make for a fine collaborative art project with my nephews. You could tackle it as a family project one rainy day and engage the writing and illustration skills of everyone in its completion. Once finished, you could put the protective clear plastic cover back on, and your new custom picture book would be ready to join the rest of your children's library.

Drew a custom cover with a pigmented pen liner and  colored it with with markers.

Copic and Prismacolor markers worked fine on the hard cover material, but they will bleed through the interior pages a bit. It will be not an issue if you only draw on one side of each sheet, but if you do choose to color with markers you may want to use some protective absorbent sheets underneath the paper.

Interior cover drawn on first page a fine pigment pen reflecting the kids interests and favorite animals. The "Series" component reflect what the kids see in their own reading books collections these days.

Pencil and pigment felt tip pens work just fine on the interior pages with minimal show through. since they are a pretty good thickness for drawing paper.


Added a few graphic designs to opposing corners of two book spreads, so that the young ones may add additional doodles or text as they see fit.

While you could use any black pen for lettering and drawing, I would recommend choosing archival pigmented pens for their permanence and water-resistant qualities. That way you have maximum flexibility in your selection of coloring materials afterwards. Meaning you don't have to worry about smears and smudges once ink and lettering have dried, and you can use alcohol-based markers and some light water-based media..

I like the brightness of the marker inks on the white paper,

 but they do seep through the page as shown above..

Watercolor pencils will work dry or wet, but keep washes light to minimize warping of the paper. We plan to continue to work on further pages in an organic manner developing additional text and images simultaneously.

Naturally you could tackle it in a more organized and planned fashion, by writing and laying out each page before filling the actual blank book. Now go make your own picture book.

Just a couple more coloring/sketching pages from the book. Some I started with some partial sketches for the kids, others were drawn on top of drawings the kids started. I colored parts of them with different hues to encourage the kids to use multiple colored pencils when coloring a given section.