Illustrated Life Journal: A Daily Mindful Practice

Illustrated Life Journal: A Daily Mindful Practice

“We have now reached the end of the course! I hope you enjoyed it! Now it is time for you to start the beautiful habit of illustrated life journalling. The first thing you need to do is find a sketchbook, as I showed you my favourite Is a medium-sized softcover one that fits nicely in my bag so I can carry it everywhere with me - I think this is an important thing to consider as you never know when you will get the urge to draw. Gather your chosen pens and pencils and create a little tool kit that you can transport with you if you wish. In my final project, I chose to work through five different prompts. Then I made up five different pages in my sketchbook. We started by looking at what we were grateful for and began illustrating our Daily Gratitude page. For this page, I chose to work with a fine liner and grey marker - I like this simple way of line drawing. Its quickness allows me to keep up with the habit. I like to start the page with something like "Today I’m grateful for..." and then add the date. Gratitude is such a powerful practice that can help pull you out of the darkest of times. It encourages you to be more present in your life and focus on any good things, even if they are tiny, like a lovely cup of coffee, or someone holding the door open for you. For each drawing, I like to add supportive text to explain what each thing is. The next page considered all the things that we had eaten that day. For me, that consisted of cereal and fruit, peanut butter and banana on toast, brownie, lots of coffee, and a pizza. I used my favourite Tombow brush pens and started by getting basic shapes and blocks of colour down on the page, before using a pencil crayon and a finer black pen to add detail and supportive text. It’s so wonderful to document an area of your life! My walk to the Domestika studios informed the third page that we filled in. There are so many things that you see in your day-to-day life and what I love about having an illustrated journal is that it encourages you to be mindful and observant, so you don’t miss a thing! I ended up drawing people exercising in the park, the blossom coming out, a mural of a robin on the side of a building, and a squirrel that ran out in front of me. I chose 4 things, so I decided to divide the page into four frames - it seems to make the page less scary. I worked quickly with a limited colour palette, worrying not if the colours matched the things in real life - I think this is a fun thing to do. I labeled each square giving an accurate account of what I saw. It’s a brilliant way to remember certain moments in your day/life. When I look back on this drawing, I can see how powerful it is to me. It is drawing that can transport you back to a time much in a way photos or words cannot, for me anyway. The fourth page was me documenting my entire day in comic book form, so using narrative to tell the story from the minute I woke to the minute I went to bed. I chose to divide my page into 9 squares and filled each one with a pale base colour before using a fine liner to fill each square with something that happened throughout my day - a visual diary. Finally, I added another colour to bring it all together. I encourage you to document your days like this! And finally comes a page that I love doing and that changes all the time, is illustrating all those things that bring inspiration to you. The meditative aspect of having to think and consider all the things that inspire you is such a lovely thing to be able to do, and that is translated in the illustrations themselves - they are full of joy! For my page, I filled it up with illustrations like my hot water bottle, running, getting lost in a book. I chose to work quickly with just two colours - one lighter base colour and a darker colour to add details and type. You will see that at first, I laid down the neon pink base colour for each item that I wanted to include. Almost like a silhouette, sometimes I love to work this way- I used to do lots of screenprinting and I think that is why. Then I worked over the top in red bringing each shape to life. You can of course just draw each object one at a time, finishing each one before moving on. By working through these 5 prompts, you now have a solid basis for illustrated journaling. Don’t be too precious over your pages. Remember that it is a place for you, a place for you to take some time for yourself in a busy, stressful world. It’s a place where you can express your feelings, document your days, tell your story. Play around with colour and mark-making, have fun, try and draw without judgment. I know how hard this is, but it is just a place for you to foster your creativity using your life as the subject matter. I would encourage you to try and keep up the daily gratitude page for 21 days - they say it takes 21 days to create a habit, and the benefits of gratitude are huge. Try and think of different things each day. It will encourage you to live a more present life. That is only ever a good thing. You may choose to continue documenting your days, either in the format, I showed you, like a comic strip, or you may find another way that works best for you. I would encourage you to draw on location. Even if you don’t have much time, it's a great practice. Sometimes the less time you have, the better as it makes you have to care less about the result, and it becomes much more about the process. I have attached, in the last unit of the course, a list of prompts that you may choose to work through. I hope that you can look to your life for endless inspiration. You may choose to have different journals for specific things - I have one purely dedicated to my gratitude. I hope you find all the wonderfully creative and therapeutic effects illustrated life journaling can bring. I would love to see your pages if you would like to share them. ”

Partial transcription of the video

“We've now reached the end of the course on Illustrated Life Journaling. I'm so excited to see you continue this mindful habit of documenting different areas of your life. Using the techniques and prompts that we have worked through. You've learned what an illustrated life journal is and understood the tools and materials that you need to work with. You now know where to find inspiration and how to use visual language techniques in your drawings. You've now filled five pages of your own journal using the prompts that I gave you. And you have learned how to adapt the image in Photoshop and sh...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Illustrated Life Journal: A Daily Mindful Practice

• Level: Beginner
• 99% positive reviews (1737)
• 53403 students
• 4 units
• 13 lessons (2h 0m)
• 6 downloads

• Category

  Illustration, Wellness

• Areas

  Creativity, Drawing, Fine Arts, Mindfulness, Sketchbook, Sketching