A few years ago I came across a YouTube video by Myriam Tillson titled “I tried drawing EVERY DAY for A YEAR – SKETCHBOOK TOUR”. Her video inspired me to make some successful and not so successful efforts of my own. I particularly loved how she used a normal day to a page diary and each day she completed a sketch, she filled in the corresponding day on the yearly calendar in the start of the journal so she could visually see the progress she made.

Now, I saw that video perhaps around April of that year and it was very difficult to find a diary at all so I opted to buy a small notebook at Typo and print out a free calendar and paste it in the front. Necessity is the Mother of invention, and all that. Those few months were pretty successful. Nothing mind blowing was created but I was really after the forming of a new habit and the boost it gave me to see more filled in than missed.

Fast forward to the days leading up to the beginning of 2024 and I was getting a bit overwhelmed with the filled diaries and materials I was dragging around. So I created my own version on the iPad using Procreate and the Apple Pencil, with the thinking that it would be less wasteful to create digitally and I could hopefully learn how to work in a streamlined fashion and understand the tools available in the digital space better. I made a simple A4 blank document, duplicated that 10x and then duplicated those 10 etc until I had 365 blank documents ready and waiting. I used a free 2024 template to fill in each day to follow my progress. I have no doubt there is a simpler way and I welcome anyone who knows a better way to share in the comments below. Thank you, in advance.

Well…what I learned was how quickly I can lay a few marks down and call it successful. It did not matter to me if all I did was a circle, being able to mark it off as “done” no matter how busy or painful my day had been made me feel that I had achieved something. And doing it digitally meant that, as long as it was charged, I could create very easily from bed on the (many) days I wasn’t physically well enough to get around.

And yet, I still didn’t feel productive. Very few works were something I considered “good” and somehow that made me feel like I still wasn’t doing any art. I craved more but felt ill equipped with my health, especially, to do more than I was doing already.

Until one day, late into 2024, I was showing a support worker the random scribbles and occasional pieces I was happy with and he was visibly impressed. Still, I did not trust he meant it because surely, I am actually terrible? Right? It took a while for his words of admiration and encouragement to sink in. When they did though, the thing that affected me the most was one word…prolific.

Because he couldn’t mean my junk work was worth counting as actual work? But he really did and said so until soon my own thinking shifted until I could say…”I do create almost every single day and it is art”. Is it always brilliant? Of course not, no one in this world is perfect, though doom scrolling can often make us feel as if others are. I did learn how to be looser, to appreciate mark making in its simplest forms as well as its most chaotic through each quick experimentation. I learned to appreciate my own strengths and weaknesses and work better within those.

I learnt through this process and studying a Certificate III in Visual Arts at Byron Community College last year, that it’s the doing that’s most important. The end result is desirable too but it’s the journey you take to get there that brings so much to you and your practice and that does not require me to be Picasso or Renoir or any of the great artists right off the bat. Because, let’s be real, they weren’t considered masters for years, often not even in their own lifetimes but their work is no less valid when they were learning or exploring than our own exploratory journeys are now. In fact, I wholeheartedly believe that we are all artists and having work hung in the Louvre is not the only way to achieve that.

Digitally, I did learn to appreciate layers and the ability to use a photograph, particularly in tattoo design, to experiment with different results until I find the right composition, colours, themes etc. It is also a very helpful tool in conjunction with traditional media. I like to take a photo of a painting or drawing if I feel stuck or uninspired and play around in Procreate with different directions I am considering without risking the original piece.

This year, I am back to physical media. I did very much miss the tactile feel of a paintbrush across the page or smudging pencil with my fingers. I am going about it a bit differently and found a beautifully enticing art journal that I created my own table in the beginning of to mark my progress as I go.

I will do a separate post on how I setup my current art journal and my thoughts on the materials so far.