Let's Look into Visual Diaries
I'll show you mine if you show me yours!
A couple months ago, I found an old blank Moleskine sketchbook on my bookshelf. I drew a few pictures in it, just to test the paper and find out if it could handle watercolor (it couldn’t, the watercolor weirdly bubbled up on the page, but I think this is no longer true of Moleskine sketchbooks), or if ink would bleed through the pages (it did not, except when I used a LOT of ink and a dip pen).
To test all these materials, I just drew whatever was right in front of me, or out the window, or the most recent pictures on my camera roll. I felt those pictures needed captions, and pretty soon I was keeping a little diary that was a mixture of pictures and captions. It’s kind of messy and weird and random, but I kind of dug it!
I found myself writing down—and illustrating—all kinds of little oddball moments that I definitely would have forgotten all about within a few days.
I relocated a banana slug off the trail in Forest Park, which I felt was necessary because people run on this trail and I have definitely seen squished banana slugs before, and once you’ve seen that, you can never unsee it. I also noticed that the dogwoods and bleeding hearts were blooming for the first time, and I realized that I always notice when something is blooming for the first time and thought I should write that down.
Meanwhile, the dogwood in front of my kitchen window is not even thinking about blooming yet, and the other day two crows were hopping around in that enormous ungainly way they have, rather violently ripping twigs off the tree, presumably to build their nests. It occurred to me that I never see a crow’s nest around here, and they must build them high up in conifers where they can stay hidden. Also, it occurred to me that our neighborhood is too clean and manicured and the crows can’t find enough twigs on the ground, so here they go ripping them out of trees.
Those are the weird and mundane things I thought about while I was drawing these little pictures.
Here’s another page:
Here I drew a picture of all the crows converging on a maple tree near my front door (and I do mean ALL the crows, there are thousands of them, and when they pick your house to land on, it is WILD), and then I also drew a picture of myself holding the
pen at Broadways Books. (I did not mean to make a Wild/Cheryl Strayed pun there, it just happened.)The story behind this is that I go to Broadway Books from time to time to sign copies of my books so that people can order signed copies. This is a service the store offers to many local authors, including Cheryl Strayed. When I realized I hadn’t brought a good signing pen with me, the bookseller said, “Hold on, we’ll get you the Cheryl Strayed pen,” and they brought out a Uniball Signo 207 Impact, which I would agree is an excellent pen for signing books, and before I gave it back to them, I took a picture of myself holding the pen and texted it to some friends to tell them about the Cheryl Strayed pen.
The picture taking/texting aspect of my life turns out to be a crucial part of keeping this particular visual diary. I don’t post much to social media anymore, so I’m much less likely to take a picture of a thing and immediately post it to social media with a caption.
But I still take the pictures. Sometimes I text them to someone, sometimes I take them to show to someone later, or to use in a painting later, and sometimes I just take them because I’m in the habit of taking pictures of interesting things.
Here I took pictures of some pottery I liked at the art museum, for no reason, since the only person I’d text pottery pictures to was already with me at the museum.
I took a picture of this dead bird on the sidewalk because I thought it was so unusual to see a dead bird, you just never see them lying around like that, and I’d only just recently been wondering about that very thing: Where do all the little urban animals go when they die, and why do I literally never see a single one?
Also, this bird seemed so perfectly posed, with all the fallen cherry blossom petals around it, and I wondered if this was some weird little bird-related murder mystery in need of solving.
This got me thinking about what a visual diary can be
A visual diary can be a lot of things, I suppose. Such as:
An artist’s entire output: One of the things I love about David Hockney’s work is that it all serves as a visual diary of his life: he tends to paint the people he knows and the places he lives.
A sketchbook filled with paintings: A visual diary could be nothing but art, with no words at all. Here’s one that I made in 2022. It’s just a diary of things I see.
A combination of words and pictures, like this post recently about the sketchbook where I drew all the illustrations for this newsletter.
It could be a lot of text and just a few little drawings or diagrams, like these pages from a post I did a while back about trying to solve a local art mystery.
My own personal rules for a visual diary
These don’t have to be your rules! But what I like about the latest iteration of my own visual diary is:
It’s quick. Little pictures that take 15 minutes, maybe.
It’s not too deep. This is not a dark intimate secret kind of diary. I would not mind if someone picked this up and flipped through it. At the same time…
It’s not meant for public viewing. Sure, I’m sharing some pages with you, but this is not intended to be an Instagram-worthy art project.
It captures all the little stuff I notice—the stuff that makes me stop for a minute, the stuff I take pictures of, the stuff I text people about, the stuff I tell friends about. These things are interesting in the moment, but I’d definitely forget about them if I didn’t write them down.
Unimportant, mundane things are also fair game. Years from now, those things will be interesting too, if only I can manage to get them down now.
I make some effort to do it every day, or most days.
It gives me a chance to notice what I notice.1
Visual diarists I admire
, of course, who writes , whose is all about drawing life’s little moments combines little drawings, lettering, and notes in his Are any of you keeping a visual diary? Post a comment and tell me about it.
Supporters are sketching Florida with me
I’m traveling for a few weeks right now. Fortunately, last time I was on the road, I made a few videos of myself sketching on the road. Those videos are going out to supporters over the next few weeks. Please enjoy the beautiful scenery and my amateurish camerawork!
I send out some kind of sketchbook-based art tutorial once a week. For just a few bucks a month, you can join us, and get access to the full archive. Join us!
The Bit at the End
Los Angeles! I’ll be speaking at the Southern California Horticultural Society on May 9. Tickets available right here.
Order signed copies of my new book, The Tree Collectors, from Broadway Books here in Portland.
Come find me on Instagram, or see paintings for sale- Right here
Order signed copies of some of my books from my husband’s bookstore, or order my books and many books I love at Bookshop.org
Take one of my online writing or art classes here
Leave a comment! I love to hear from you!
From Allen Ginsberg:
Observe what’s vivid.
Notice what you notice.
Catch yourself thinking.
(also: If we don’t show anyone, we’re free to write anything.)
Thanks for the peeks into your sketch diaries! I like that the writing and the sketches supplement each other.
I think of all my sketchbooks as diaries -- just whatever I saw that day. But because I have so many different formats of books going simultaneously, it kind of bugged me that none of them shows the chronology of my life the way a written diary would (which I also keep and have kept most of my life). So a little more than a year ago, I started keeping a dedicated "sketch diary" -- a pocket-size sketchbook that I carry with me always. I make at least one sketch in it a day, ideally from life and usually some ordinary thing while taking my walks. If, by the end of the day, I haven't sketched in it yet, I sketch from a photo I took that day or (occasionally) from imagination (I try to write a comic of something that happened that day). The important thing for me is to sketch at least one page per day in that little book in chronological order (regardless of what else I've sketched that day in other books). It's very satisfying to have each day "accounted for" in that way. "I sketched today, and therefore I existed today." Something like that.
Yes Amy, I keep a visual diary - because I am still learning to draw and that way I keep practicing. Also, because every time in my life I kept a written diary, reading it later made me cringe and destroy it. Curiously, looking at clumsy drawings later, is not cringe-worthy at all, but makes me smile. I wonder why that is! Anyway, I keep at it.