This Book Has No Rules

Everyone is creative – especially when there are no rules.

This is your book to use as you want. You can skip exercises. Rip out a page. Share with a friend. Ignore instructions. Do one prompt multiple times. Draw in the bath. Draw at work.

Make a badge. Do a tiny painting. Do a huge painting. Cut a hole in the page to see your art on the following. Have a party (that’s not really a prompt). Collect something. Stick it to the page. Paint something using only blue. Draw what you see. Make a collage. Sketch people on the bus.

The only thing you need to do? Keep having fun.

Award-winnig illustrator Naomi Tipping had fallen out of love with her own creativity when she decided that, for a whole year, she would stop worrying about whether what she made was good, and instead just start following the fun. That led to a series of challenges – with running, sketching, creating, with others and by herself, from making with only three materials to doing one drawing a day. During Naomi’s year of fun, she created some flip books – the first of which was published by Batsford in 2025 as Cats in Pants, which sold over 10,000 copies in its first three months.

And now it is your turn. Inspired by her year, and annoyed by how people’s love of creativity is taken away by rules, marking and an unachievable drive for perfection, Naomi has created This Book Has No Rules, a sketchbook of creativity prompts for a day, a month, a year, that will help you leave aside the productivity drive, put down your screen and pick up a pencil to draw and create the way you feel like.