Art: how to use your visual arts diary

Hint: don’t leave your visual arts diary blank all year. Trying to fill it up the night before everything’s due will lead to disaster.

If you’re feeling like filling in a diary is a pointless waste of time, or beneath you as a budding artist, here are three ways to stock up those blank pages. It’ll help you and keep your teacher happy.

A place to experiment… and fail

When you’re presented with a blank canvas – whether that’s literal or figurative – it can be daunting to know where to start. That’s where your diary comes in, as a place to make a mess! Ruin drawings and come up with concepts that are stupid, unworkable and embarrassingly unoriginal. Nobody’s judging your process, because it’s a path to the finished artwork.

Somewhere to work through conceptual stuff

That sounds pretty fancy, but what we mean is; your diary isn’t just a place where you draw your aunty over and over again, trying to get her mouth juuuust right. It’s also a place to write, to get the jumble of ideas out of your brain and onto the page. You can use sentences, point form, comics. Have characters argue in speech bubbles… or you might just write down some weird quotes that tickle your soul.

As a reminder to your future self

You might think you’ll remember the names “Francis Picabia” or “Carlo Carrà” when it comes to crafting your Dadaist masterpiece later in the year, but you’ll probably get distracted by the sinister gothic of Arnold Böcklin’s series or vintage Doctor Who monsters between now and then.