The first exercise for Part 4 asks me to explore a range of illustrators who use visual diaries within their creative processes. I will then reflect on the different approaches that they use. I decided to focus on one artist as I found this exercise briefing a bit confusing as I have to also research more artists and their visual diaries in the next Exercise 4:1?
For this first exercise, I decided to research a lady called Myfanwy Tristram whose art was shown in the workbook for this part of the unit, her visual diaries are what I would expect to see if someone said “visual diary” it’s literally a diary where the extracts are illustrated.
I chose to focus on one of her visual diary projects where she went on a holiday to ‘Bath’
The visual diary pages:
I find it really interesting that she not only illustrates in her diary but she also adds found objects as well including pamphlets and labels from food containers. Her use of materials seems limited as she looks like she just uses felt pens and fine liners, but even after saying this, her pages are still very full of colour, texture, and information. The pages are very busy. It looks like she doesn’t plan out where she is going to draw as her pages seem hectic and a bit messy but that goes with her style so it’s a positive. Even though she does have limited materials the way she uses them is very interesting, for instance when she adds shading to her drawings using the blue felt pen on the illustration of her with pajamas on and on the cream in the chocolate eclair. I like the way she incorporates her writing in parts of her illustrations for instance in the grass, the literally has made sure there is no empty space in her diary. Most of the writing that she includes in her pages is humorous and gives off an energy that you would feel if someone was texting. What she decides to include is all very basic and funny information about every aspect of her trip.
Overall I like Myfawny’s visual diary and will be using her style as inspiration in future exercises. As I am quite neat when it comes to sketchbook work I really need to think more like Myfawny when jotting down information and sketches.
OCA Learning Log 