Lately I’ve been loving my Midori MD Notebook Light in B6 Slim, which I mentioned frequently using in my recent sketchbook awards.
I am assigning myself a mission to completely fill one of these 48 page notebooks during my upcoming trip to Nice and Lisbon. To practice, I’ve been exercising my visual journaling muscles to see how I might want to document my days.
Here are my pages from the past week, with commentary and tips for visual journaling interspersed throughout! There’s some good, bad, and ugly—by sharing it all, I hope this post can give insight into how I approach improving after a “failed” drawing or page.
FYI, this section of the post will be accessible to everyone for a few weeks, after which it will be locked for paid subscribers only.
My first page was experimental, to say the least. (Ok yes, I think it’s plain ugly!) I drew the cover of an album I’ve been listening to all summer as well as ingredients in my morning smoothie in a colorful grid. Every so often I feel compelled to make a graphic, shape-driven artwork, then come up against my limits. But it’s fun to keep trying!
The page on the right is filled with observational drawings of people on the move in Astor Place, NYC. To draw people on the move, you need to have a reliable, intuitive way of how you draw people from various angles and postures. Though I’ve been going to figure drawing classes here and there, I haven’t practiced drawing people walking in a while. I can see the stiffness in all the bodies on this page.
Off to Pinterest I go to practice drawing people walking.
Also making sure to draw people with bags. People are always carrying things.
Then I practiced drawing my face in various expressions. The top half is horrifically not me; the bottom half is getting closer. It’ll still be a while before I satisfyingly land on a stylized version of myself.
Starting here I document various happenings throughout my day. The page has no room to breathe, but I’m enjoying the actual contents. Also there is something freeing about drawing something poorly then leaving a comment about it (see the “yikes” yoga pose where my leg is in the wrong position). It’s a way to acknowledge you messed up, then let it be.
On the right page I start experimenting with line quality. I’m finding it helpful to mix drawing from life, memory, and photo reference to capture the essence of my day.
I had a good hour to spare in Union Square Park, which resulted in this spread. The scene of green metal tables on the right page is messy, but it does give me a sense of place.
After the last spread I want to work on composition, so I made a few thumbnails focusing on value. Then I tried some experiments with how I might want to combine colored pencil and ink. Pencil offers up playfulness and wide range of colors, while ink gives me control and ease. I’ve been drawing with ink much more this year, uncovering surprises in how it can push my style.
I drew the right page while sitting in Cooper Triangle during a break from work. I really love the tree with the bird and sun poking through!
I’ve been working to shed my limiting money beliefs and listing out items and experiences that I am happy to spend money on. Making visual lists like this is one of my favorite ways to fill a page.
Now we’ve reached the weekend! Saturday was a really active day around Manhattan and I can viscerally remember it all, even the brief time spent avoiding the sudden downpour. Once again I am seeing my tendency to cram everything onto one page—mental note to try a two page spread per day when I travel.
To break the tendency I have to leave no white space on a page, I documented some of my outfits with plenty of space to breathe. This was super fun and casual to do!
I have long seen sneakers as my arch nemesis when drawing people. They’re good to practice when drawing on the subway, since drawing someone’s shoes is not invasive in the way that drawing a full body or face might be. Another fun thing to draw is food packaging! The packaging is often more evocative than the visual of the food itself.
I like to intersperse the pages with random thoughts and observations so that the pages feel like a reflection of my melting pot brain. The biggest pleasure in visual journaling is flipping through past pages and recalling moments of presence. Sometimes the images transport me to that space; other times it’s the text.
You made it all the way to the end, hooray! Thanks for following along, and if you’d like some more illustrated journaling inspiration, see below:
I’m loving how diverse each page is and enjoyed seeing the different techniques/concepts you experimented with along the way!
Love all your pages and you will have a lot to draw in Lisbon for sure 😉 food, traditional packaging, old architecture, TILES🤩, the sea, pigeons and I could go on... 😄💙