Research Task 4.0/4.1 - Visual Diaries

I have combined Research task 4.0 and 4.1 into the same page and slides. These researches consisted of an "opportunity to explore a range of illustrators who use visual diaries within their creative process and to reflect on the different approaches they use" and how their sketchbooks are used within this process.

I have looked through a list of artists and illustrators suggested by OCA as well as my own selection, they all possess a distinctive style but there can be some common patterns between them.
Below in the slides you can find these artists and some pages from their visual diaries.






From this list here's my personal Top ten choices:

• Pep Carrio (Slide 4)
• Adebanji Alade (Slide 11)
• Nicky Nargesian (Slide 13)
• Myfanwy Tristram (Slide 14)
• Varvara Fomina (Slide 18)
• Keir Edmonds (17)
• Lynda Barry (Slide 6)
• Bruce Wymer (Slide 7)
• Paul Abadilla (Slide 21)
• Wannita Panchana (Slide 22)

I later reflected on my choices and what criteria I have chosen for my selection, to help me find answers there were some questions which helped me articulate the answers.

• What are the visual qualities of the journals?

There's quite a diverse visual quality between the journals I selected, each artist sets its own uniqueness to their visual diaries showing that there's no standard way of making them.
Artists like Wannita Panchana and Varvara Formina have a Comic book format approach to their journal. Keir Edmonds does observational drawing in a highly realistic format with no words at all. Adebanji Alade focuses on sketching people, mostly faces and these are spreaded across his pages like fragments mixed with some descriptive words of his subjects. Whilst others add fantasy and abstact drawing on their own or mixed with more realistic elements. In conclusion, they're highly diverse.

• What kind of content and ideas are explored?

The content and ideas are different from artist to artist in their sketchbooks since they all experiment in their unique way but there are common ideas and contents among them such as writing a narrative with words and pictures, reportage, visual diaries documenting their everyday, exaggerating and cartooning their observations, creating a fictional narrative to their everyday documenting in different forms like a comic page where there's a sequence in their pictures or in individual panels not connected to one another, fragmenting of ideas and concepts or creating surreal and abstract interpretations of their everyday narrative like Pep Carrio who chooses a simple object or subjects and creates an abstract sketch around that object.

• How does the visual quality and content help establish the creative identity of the maker?

The creative identity of the maker is defined by his choice of subject and themes, the marks he uses and his mediums of choice and their combination. An artists journal typically portrays his journey and reflections throughout his daily life , where he records his interests as well as he shows to the world what he's curious about and how he interprets his observations.
The visual quality and content of the artist journals can also be a source of ideas for future or more elaborated work but can also be considered a definite art item on its own, it is where his ideas are stored and these ideas are what creates an "artists creative identity".

• Do these journals help to make connections with these artists' wider work?

Some of the artists use their visual diaries as their definite main work (Pep Carrio, Nicky Nargesian Myfanwy Tristram, Lynda Barry, Keir Edmonds among others.) while other use their diaries as a vehicle towards their wider work like Paul Abadilla who's a concept designer for various Disney films or Adebanji Alade who uses his visual journal to gather ideas for his stunning portrait oil paintings.

Reference:
Sokol, D. (2015). 1000 Artist Journey Pages - Personal Pages and Inspirations, Quarry Books, Massachussets, 2008
Keir Edmonds, https://theawesomedaily.com/keir-edmonds-sketchbook-diary-berlin/