Fill in the Blank from Quirk Books - Inspirational doodling ideas for young and old

Our #ReadItMD13 Theme Week continues with even more books to encourage your children to pick up their pens, pencils and crayons and get doodling.

"Fill in the Blank: An Inspirational Sketchbook" by Muratayan Varham and Elodie Chaillous quickly became a firm favourite when we reviewed it back in October last year. A big and satisfyingly thick book full of brilliant inspirational ideas for doodling, the book offers you a few teasing ideas on each page with the aim of getting you to - well - fill in the blanks.

So for instance, you could design the world's most awesome cakes...

I can assure you, I couldn't bake or make anything this cool.

Or, perhaps one for the dads out there, design a seriously brilliant tattoo...

Ow, that's going to leave a mark in the morning

Each black and white 'blank' gives you just enough to get your imagination whirring away. Though Charlotte and I enjoyed scribbling away together I have to admit I'd sneak off when she went to bed for more doodling fun in this.

Books that give children an appreciation for famous artworks are always popular with us. James Mayhew has come up with some amazing books celebrating the world's most talented artists, and in "Katie and the Starry Night" James pays homage to Vincent Van Gogh as his popular character Katie discovers the master's works in a gallery.

"Katie and the Starry Night" by James Mayhew. Utterly beautiful and inspiring.

While her sleepy Grandma snoozes, Katie tries to catch a star from Van Gogh's beautiful "Starry Night" painting, and this leads her on a voyage of discovery as the mischievous star dances and leaps just out of reach. Other characters from Van Gogh's paintings pitch in to help...

Katie enlists the help of the Olive Harvesters in "The Olive Trees" painting

James' work is stunning, and the best part of his books that touch on the works of the great masters are that we can dive into our art books at home and find the real works themselves too. Linking children's books to the real world in this way is a stroke of genius and leads children on their own voyage of discovery too.

Usborne are always reliable when it comes to producing brilliant books to inspire young artists to exercise their talents.

The Usborne Book of Drawing, Doodling and Colouring. Brilliant (and sadly, also very absorbent)

The Usborne Book of Drawing, Doodling and Colouring is - or rather should I say WAS - a great favourite of ours. In a similar vein to the "Fill in the Blanks" book from Quirk, the Usborne Book gives children some great patterns and doodling ideas and can keep them happily occupied for hours. Our copy met with a rather untimely end as Charlotte ended up being car-sick all over it as she quietly doodled away on a long journey back from Cornwall last year. Sadly we haven't replaced it yet but it is definitely a fab book - just make sure that kids have a light breakfast if you're going to use it in the way we did. Eeks!

Finally how about a doodling drawing story to keep your children inspired?

Scribbles and Ink by Ethan Long (Blue Apple Books). Quick on the draw!

"Scribbles and Ink" by Ethan Long (Blue Apple Books) features a battling duo playing cat and mouse as each tries to prove who is the best artist. Though they squabble and fight at first, scribbles and ink soon discover that collaborating and friendship are far more enjoyable than arguing. Check out our review linked above to read more about this talented pair.

We'll be back for more before this week's theme finishes on friday. As always, please do let us know your favourite books for inspiring doodling and drawing in the comments below.

Dog Loves Drawing by Louise Yates. We love Dog!

This week for our #ReadItMD13 Theme Week we're looking at lovely books that inspire and create a love of doodling, scribbling, painting and drawing. As you'd imagine, there are tons of books that artistically inspire and we'll start with the sublime "Dog Loves Drawing" by Louise Yates.

You may already be familiar with Dog. He loves books, and in previous adventures we saw him open his very own book store after getting lost in a booky adventure. When Dog's auntie sends him a blank book one day, Dog is puzzled - but of course a blank book is the perfect place to create your own adventures. Make a few marks, draw a few lines and soon you'll be sailing the high seas or driving a fantastic train, or doing any number of brilliant things as you unleash your imagination.

"BUT I CAN'T DRAW!" shouts Charlotte from the wings. Not to worry, because lots of books show you the hows, whys and wherefores of learning to draw anything you like - from comic book heroes to cute cuddly animals.

Barroux, the awesome French graphic designer has produced a fabulous book with Blue Apple called "Draw Patterns with Barroux".

Draw Patterns with Barroux. Fun, easy and a brilliant way to learn great drawing skills

Rather than taking you through some quite complex drawing tutorials that never elicit the desired result, Barroux's approach is to teach youngsters how to make basic marks, and then start to have fun with those marks as you turn them into other things. It's a step that most drawing tutorial books miss, but learning how to effectively make marks and how to begin turning your enthusiasm into real skill is definitely worth investigating. We loved Barroux's effervescent approach, and there are so many fun pages to play around with that it's a really inspirational little book.

Once your skills start to advance, you can really ramp up the learning curve.

"Junior How To Draw Baby Animals" by Kate Thompson (Top That Publishing) is just one of a series of "Junior" drawing books from Top That which introduces more elaborate drawing tutorials and concepts.

Soon you'll be drawing ginger kittens like an artistic ninja with "Junior How To Draw Baby Animals" by Kate Thompson (Top That)

Simple step by step diagrams show you how to begin drawing everything from cute kittens to otters to funky monkeys! It was actually quite cool to see these books being used at Charlotte's school for a classroom activity where each child chose their favourite animal and learned to draw it (unsurprisingly Charlotte picked a cute puppy).

As children get older, they'll want to learn how to draw even cooler stuff. We have absolutely loved the Walter Foster "Learn to Draw Disney" books which are pretty challenging (alright, they're downright hard even for adults who have developed drawing skills) but the essential components of each tutorial lead you down different paths of investigating how to create cool and convincing characters.

We'll be taking a look at a few more books designed to encourage a love of doodling as the week progresses but no theme week would be complete without our personal favourite little scribbling dude, "Harold and the Purple Crayon" by Crockett Johnson.

Harold and the Purple Crayon. So many adventures from a simple little crayola!

We had a lot of fun reading, reviewing and drawing Harold and his purple-hued world. A collection of stories like no other, where children will love the way Harold's adventures unfold as he draws. Such an inspiration!

More soon, in the meantime keeeeeeep scribbling!