In research exercise 4.0 I was introduced to the use of sketchbooks as "Visual Diaries". For this exercise, I was asked to research as many examples of visual diaries as I could find (being prompted with an initial list of artists), and come up with my top ten.
My top ten, in no particular order, are:
Dan Berry
Danny Gregory
James Albon
Jose Naranja
Lapin
Lizzy Stewart
Lynda Barry
Myfanwy Tristram
Nicky Nargesian
Victor Lundy
You can find a Pinterest board with their work below, I have split it into sections on the Pinterest site:
Selection
I was really drawn to visual diaries that had a journalistic aspect to them. There is a lot of variation between how neat and ordered they are, but I felt that I naturally chose diaries that were told as the artists' personal accounts.
I was particularly attracted to diaries that had a sequential narrative to them, I felt that the blend of word and picture felt close to my own way of recording things.
There are lots of accounts that involve travel, and I think this speaks to my own growing wanderlust. However, each of the accounts have very different styles. Some are quick and loose, others would have taken significantly longer to put together. Naranja's work, in particular, is very very ordered and must take a good deal of time and organisation to assemble and curate.
Where reference was available, I could see a link between the diaries and their creator's wider work, but they are less... precious, I think. In a lot of ways, they are more emotional. Gregory's work stands out for this aspect, as he used a visual journal to account and process his wife's injury and later death. It's extremely powerful.
For each of the diaries, you get a sense of the person behind them. Lundy's accounts of the second world war are poignant but executed with expert draftsmanship, which speaks to his pre-war occupation as an architect.
In my research I did find diaries which had a more distinct relationship with future work, providing more direct influence to their final pieces. I found that I prefer the distinction between sketchbook and journal, and I think this is reflected by my preference to use different size and types of sketchbooks for different reasons.
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