The National Gallery of Art's Index of American Design includes thousands of watercolors recording the shapes and details of ordinary American objects. It is a useful place to begin if you want to draw but have run out of subjects.

The Washington museum's 2026 library exhibition, Reimagining America by Design, offers another route through that collection. Its Research & Process presentation ran from August 31 through October 30, showing how George Washington University students worked with the Index during a spring course.

Try one object first

Start online with something you can name: a chair, a buckle, a child's toy. Look at the edge, the fastenings and the relationship between the parts. Then put an object of your own on a table and spend ten minutes drawing its outline. A pencil and ordinary paper are enough to begin.

This suits an adult who wants a modest creative exercise, or a family looking for an activity that does not require everyone to finish the same craft. Compare drawings by noticing what each person chose to include. Accuracy can wait.

The library has its own hours

The display is in the East Building's ground-level Library Atrium. Its published hours are weekdays, 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding federal holidays. The Gallery's free admission does not make every part of the building a weekend destination.

A watercolor records an object through decisions

The Gallery's online Index offers roughly 18,000 works to browse. That is large enough to choose a subject that fits something in your own home: a shoe, a utensil, a chair or a toy. Begin with one record, keeping the object's title distinct from the name of the artist who documented it.

A drawn record can direct attention in ways a casual photograph may not. An outline can separate a handle from the background, and a change in color can describe a surface. When comparing a watercolor with your own object, identify which details the artist makes legible. Do not assume every blank space or tidy edge was present in the same form in the original room.

  1. Open one Index image and write its title and record link on the back of your paper.
  2. Draw the outside shape of a related object you own. Leave the small ornament until the proportions are in place.
  3. Add a detail that explains its use, such as a hinge, fastening or worn edge.
  4. Return to the Index work and compare how its artist handled that same problem.

A second look can help with revision. You may discover that a handle joins at a different angle, or that a shadow hides the opening you meant to describe. Make one change that improves the information in the drawing, then keep both versions. The differences make the revision visible.

The library exhibition adds a contemporary view of the Index through students' choices about how to present an older documentation project.

The drawing's date is not the object's date

The Index began as a Federal Art Project during the Great Depression. The Gallery gives its scope as 18,257 watercolors by about 1,000 artists, documenting American folk and decorative arts from the colonial period through 1900. These are twentieth-century records of older designs. A date beside a watercolor identifies the drawing unless the record separately dates the object it depicts.

Dorothy Dwin's Man's Shoe is dated 1941 and made in watercolor and graphite on paper. Its accession number is 1943.8.1977. The title describes the subject, Dwin is the artist who recorded it, and 1941 dates her work. Those fields do not establish that she designed or manufactured the shoe.

This distinction helps when choosing a drawing reference. The buckle's placement can explain how a shoe fastens, while shading describes volume. An Index artist was making an older object's construction readable on a flat sheet. Someone sketching a chair or utensil faces a related decision about which view reveals its function.

The library exhibition also changes after the research presentation. From November 2 through December 31, its Work & Play section brings student work together with collection material concerning toys, games, dolls and figurines. That is a separate reason for a return visit, with the same weekday library access limits.