Research Task 4:0 Visual Diaries

Mydanwy Tristram
@Mockduck, from Brighton (UK) creator of Comics and Graphic Memoirs.

First of all I pulled up Mydanwy’s Website https://myfanwytristram.com/category/sketch-diary/ I started to look though her work, oldest first to the newest as I wanted to see how she grows within her visual diaries.

I really enjoyed reading her visual diaries, finding humour in everyday life which the viewer can relate to. In a way her work also reminds me of Simon cat. https://simonscat.com/ , Simon Tofield whom has made a living with illustrating his life with his cat(s), finding the humour in owning a cat that everyone can relate to.
This all made me think about my own visual diary in the form of a comic, actually have so many missed moments with the kids / being a mum, planning my wedding and being deaf. Lucky I tend to record these moment on Facebook, so many one day I could do a sort of autobiography comic ? But, for now, maybe work at adding these moment visually at the end, or when have a few moments to spare as a starting point.

I’ve always wanted to keep a dairy, but I find sometime words are not easy for me, but images actually do. But the challenge lies in whatever I can visually tell my life, take what is in my head and draw it.

Along with Myfanwy I alread have other inspirations to help guide me in the form of visual diary humour.

One of my favioute teachers on skillshare is Mimi Chao, who did a skillshare live :Capture a moment with Illustrated Journaling. also Draw your Life. Intro to illustrated Journaling, she does quite a few classes actually that can be applied to my own visual dairy. Illustrated memory maps also being an awesome class that gets you thinking about your milestones in life as a visual illustration.
Her website is https://www.mimochai.com/ which is stunning, little insight into Mimi visual life.

There are a few classes on skill share that can help me, find this side of myself such as
Visual Journaling: Drawing your Feelings – by Jordan Sandler –
This class has some useful exercise to what I feel gets you started and warmed up.
Draw A Diary Comic – by Ira Marcks
Ira is another teacher on skillshare I really admire, you walk away from his classes with new influences and a bit of new history knowledge. This could be useful if wanted a “guide” into turning my day into a comic form. Also started me thinking more about the structure of my visual diaries over just a collection of images from my day.
The class itself is a short 10 min class which covers his visit to a grocery store, covers everything needed to make a “Diary Comic”.
He also covers briefly about James Kolchalka (American elf project) He did a page a day pretty much for 14 years and started the trend diary comics, which I see is just way to create a visual diary. Ira Marcks also says that the diary comic is the “perfect way to experiment, try things new,” I will keep this in mind.

Naturally my research was leading me into my next research task, Top ten visual diaries.

Sketchbook Pages
I started a new Sketchbook

Trying to think what a visual dairy would mean to me.

Quick test comic to see how could put my life into a form of comic.
I wanted it to be loose/sketchy so would be able to quickly put together at the end of the day.
Coloured using pencils (for that sketchy feel)

This is more of a test in my personal sketchbook to try and draw something of my day at the end of the day. (the sketch – I ended up working on in procreate – Below)

Other work relating to this research task
Which includes my own visual diary which been uploading on to Instagram.

I like the idea of keeping a form of visual diary, I started to think how I could create my own and this led nicely into the next research task where I had the chance to study and explore visual diaries of others.
Most importantly it started another personal growth and that is exploring how to use my growing “voice”.