Artist Diary Day 5 🗃️ Examples

Ask Adam your questions on drawing writing and keeping an artist diary

You are now reading Day 5 of this FREE 5 day email course, where I give everything you need to start and maintain an artist diary.

Missed Day 1? Start there: Why it’s so easy to get ideas but so difficult to turn them into anything tangible.

Examples of Artist Diaries.

Before we go, I want to leave you with a few examples of people’s artist diaries.

I offer these to you more ann inspiration than something to aspire to. I want to make a few points.

1. Ideas need a place to be collected and cultivated

2. Often these ideas don’t start out pretty

3. This practice is more common than you might imagine.

Here are the examples:

A story is born in the artist diary of renowned Children’s illustrator Sir Quintin Blake.

‘Over the last two decades, my diary has become my sketchbook. It is “writing with pictures” mostly. Of course I do write with words too, but I start thinking with images and later add words if neecessary.’ - Sunkyung Cho

“I’m not sure if notebooks lead to paintings or paintings lead to notebooks. I’ve been working in books since high school, something about the perfection of a bound book as a picture container makes me happy… it’s a playground for visual ideas” - Henrique Drescher

“Everyone comes to the realisation that their certainty was what was wrong” - Lynda Barry

This is from my own artist diary, it’s actually hard to find something to share most of it is just scribbles…

‘Who does not feel the pleasure of holding a notebook overflowing with drawings, with wavy pages, through which time has passed… it’s like a friend you don’t need to impress but already knows you.” - Manuel Marsol

If you can think of any examples of your own, please share them in the chat, you can also share your own artist diaries.

DAY 5 Creative Action:

A new beginning

Let today mark a new beginning in your artist diary.

Use your artist diary to take a first step into a new quest to bring more creativity into your daily life. Maybe write down a commitment like; “Today I begin my journey as a ten minute artist, nothing will stop me from spending 10 minutes each day with my artist diary”

You can write it over and over again as affirmations, or just once in a more decorative way like an inscription.

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Sources: “Syllabus” - Lynda Barry, ‘Illustrator’s sketchbooks’ - Martin Salisbury

Missed a day? Catch up here:

The Artist Diary

Day 1: What is an artist diary, and why you should keep one

Day2: What stops people from beginning or sticking to this practice

Day3: My three best Artist Diary Setups (repeatable prompts)

Day4: Q&A and joining an artist diary community

Day5: Examples and inspiration from other artist diaries.