A walkthrough of my diary
A 20-minute page-by-page video tour of my notebook from November 7, 2021 to January 8, 2022
Hey y’all,
Today I’m doing something I’ve never done before: I’m sharing a 20-minute video of me flipping through my diary page-by-page and talking about my habit.
Here’s a 30-second preview:
I’ve kept a daily notebook for a few decades now, but I’ve been keeping a good ol’ fashioned everyday diary since January of 2017:
The diary is the heart of my practice, the place where most of my work is made or at least first conceived. I share a lot of pages on my Instagram and on Twitter, but these are always the good pages. I don’t think I’ve ever actually flipped through a whole volume in front of the camera.
This diary was an interesting one because at a certain point I decided to try to make it more like a crazy medieval manuscript, with text in the middle and things going on in the margins.
A few links before you watch the walkthrough:
The biggest influences on my diaries are Lynda Barry and Thoreau. (My kids comics are inspired by James Kochalka.)
Everything in this one was written and drawn with my trusty brush pen.
You’ll notice there aren’t a lot of “I did this/I did that” type entries. I save that for my logbook, which is basically just an appointment book filled out retroactively.
The kind of notebooks I use are listed on my studio gear page.
Here’s how I begin a notebook.
If you’d like to start your own diary, but don’t know where to begin, check out The Steal Like an Artist Journal.
Finally, here’s a video of my goofy weigh-in/weigh-out ritual:
Okay! Here we go — feel free to pause on pages to get a better look or to skip ahead:
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