Incorporating drawings into daily journaling
Journaling is a vital habit for me, as I've previously discussed on this blog. Earlier this year, to nurture my interest in visual thinking, I enrolled in the course Illustrated Diary: Fill Your Sketchbook with Experiences by an architect and illustrator, David Morales. The course was essentially designed to encourage us to document our days with images and capture each day in a visual way. Simple techniques were offered by the author to help us pay more attention to everyday objects and scenes, and improve control and precision when drawing.
I began drawing at the end of each day and it rapidly became my favorite part of the day. In fact, I’ve noticed that when I don't draw and leave a blank page in my journal, I recall less from the day. The fact that we take the time to capture and contemplate such moments makes the visual aspect so useful for remembering important events or just pleasant moments. In this sense, drawing scenes from everyday life feels like a meditative practice to me.
To keep my practice consistent, I started using notebooks by Flame Tree Notebooks from their midi notebook collections with lines on the left side and blank pages on the right. This way, I can dedicate an entire page to journaling about my day, and on the right, I can sketch the highlights of that day.
