I’ve been doing less diary drawings so far in 2023, but I’ve been sort of marvelling that I managed to keep it up all through 2022. And I’ve noticed, looking back, that I went through several phases:
The first ones were all pretty free form, with lots of text and no background. There’s a lot of weird ones in this time that I really love. I never knew what I would draw, but it often felt like I could come up with some wonderful weirdness.
Then I started adding those coloured backgrounds and working in a square format. The squares came about because they just looked better in instagram (hangs head) where I was sharing everything…
Then I started to hit a real stride in terms of what to draw. I’ve fallen in love with drawing animals and exploring their poses and beaks and tails and claws and hooves. I’ve been drawing many of them ever since and they definitely began in the diary pages!
Geometric forms and patterns started to emerge too, especially when I felt tired or a bit brain dead. But I’m thinking a lot about how they can become a real place and maybe they have a connection that will live into my next drawings?
If you’ve been my undergrad student, you would know what a spiral means. It’s so useful when you are just processing, and you can see I draw them more and more as the diary progresses. There were a lot more days when I couldn’t think of what to draw in the time I felt like I had. There was a real struggle in the fall when I felt like I just couldn’t draw anything like I had been. Actually I felt myself just wishing for more time to work on a drawing before having to move on. It felt like a sign that I was ready to stop, but I did keep going…
And towards the end I started doing a bunch of collage. I’m not sure it’s got anything too interesting going on yet, but I’m thinking now that maybe I should keep doing more of it in the new diary. Yep, I’m doing another one this year, but I’m trying to approach it differently. Not just so that it isn’t what I already did, but to play with the way I work in it….timescales especially. Of course I’ll share the new ones before too long…
This is far more interesting to look back on than a load of words. Lovely.