Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, and welcome to Design Your Daily Pages. I'm so excited for this one. I'm going to show
you how to create your own version of daily pages to give
you the best chance of actually committing to keeping a consistent daily sketchbook
or journaling habits. I'm one of those people
who's always wanted to keep a beautiful
daily sketchbook. But to be honest, I have never been able
to actually do it on a consistent extended
basis until recently. I tried so many
different approaches to this and nothing quite stuck, and I know that I'm
not alone in this. We all know a daily drawing
and journaling practice is good for us. It helps us improve our skills, and clear our minds and
deepen our self-reflection. I'm an illustrator and designer for my studio, Mimo Chai. I also teach classes and host a creative
community cloud house. Whether it's trying
to get better at drawing or exploring
self-discovery, a foundational practice
I want to encourage is keeping a daily sketchbook
for journaling habit. I finally decided to really
focus on this and figure out a way to make a sketchbook
journal really work for me. I absorbed a tone of the sketchbook and journaling practices that are out there. From drawing prompts
to molding pages to bullet journaling and
goal-setting journals. These are all great methods, but the thing I realized is that I need something
designed for my specific goals and is realistically doable
on a daily basis. That's what I did.
My daily pages are now a part of my
morning routine. They not only help
me consistently improve on my
illustration skills, but also help me start the
day off on the right foot. I genuinely love it
and I want to share this practice with
you. In this class. I'm going to guide you
through my exact process of how I came up with my
version of daily pages, so that by the end
you'll have your own. I'll break down all
the elements and design considerations
to keep in mind, and show you my
favorite drawing tools, the best sketchbooks, and how I create my sources
of inspiration. There's also a
class worksheet to help make it even easier. I'm so excited to see what
you're going to come up with. Let's get started. [MUSIC]
2. Class Project: Your project for this class is to come up
with your own version of daily pages and share
an example with us. I really encourage
you to also share your process and
considerations along the way. I really think it'll
help inspire others. As for what you'll need, well get into the tools
that you can use for daily pages in one of
the next sessions. For now, all you
need is something to sketch ideas or take notes with. A paper and pencil or
a tablet are all fine.
3. Daily Pages Basics: I want to take a
few minutes to go over why daily pages are so helpful and talk about a few popular formats that'll
come into play later. When I say daily pages, I'm just referring to any
sketchbook and or journaling practice that happens on a consistent, ideally daily basis. This one from practice and routine helps build discipline, improve skills, nurture well-being, and
invite self-reflection. I personally find it to be one of the most important
habits to keep right up there with
meditation and exercise. There are many practices out there that support this habit. Let's talk about a few of them. Let's start with daily
sketchbook practices. One of the most common
pieces of advice you'll hear for artists is to
keep a daily sketchbook. It helps hone your craft and
come up with creative ideas. It's always so fun to see an
artist's sketchbook filled with beautiful loose
giants and quirky ideas. But I'm sure many of
you have tried this and realized that it's
harder than it looks. Sometimes it's because you
don't know what to draw. There are many drawing prompt books and guide journals out there as well as drawing
challenges on social media. Having some structure around what to draw is
definitely helpful. It's even more helpful
if you pick the drawing prompts yourself so that
it serves your goals. We'll talk about that in
one of the next sessions. Another great approach
to keeping a sketchbook is illustrated or
visual journaling. It's one of the first
things that I did during my creative career transition and I still really
believe in it. Basically, you just draw
what's happening in your life or little
bits from your day. Your drawing prompts are
already predetermined, so that makes it easy. It's also a nice way to
keep a journal and someone turns into a little comic
or book about your life. I had a lot of fun designing different
page layouts for this. However, after a while, I wasn't motivated to keep it up
on a consistent basis. It took too long
to do every day. We'll definitely keep this
one in mind as we consider a daily page template and figure out how to make it work for us. Another popular form of journaling is
gratitude journaling, and it's related to illustrated journaling
but really focuses on the aspect of enhancing or developing our
sense of gratitude, which helps shift our
perspective to be more positive and also helps cultivate our sense
of well-being. Many companies have put out
guided gratitude journals and apps that help you
practice gratitude every day. This is a little too
narrow for my purposes, but I think it's really
sweet and can be great element to bring
into our planning. Morning pages is a practices introduced too through the book, The Artist's Way
by Julia Cameron. It's a really popular
book where people who are on a path of creative awakening. One of the main tools to teachers is called
morning pages, where you fill up
three pages of writing every day first thing
in the morning. You can write about
anything you like and you can think of
anything to write. You can even just write, I don't know what to write over and over again as long as
you hit three pages. The ideas are mental brain
dump and is intended to help you break out
of creative blocks and make room for
the good stuff. Many people swear
by the practice. I personally tried it and I found that while I
enjoy aspects of it, I really wanted to practice specific skills such
as drawing more. My issues weren't
so much create of works but I wanted
to hone my skills. I still think it's a great
aspect to keep in mind. Let's keep that
in our arsenal as we think about our daily pages. Last but not least, bullet journaling and similar
goal-setting journals are of course very popular. They help set goals, break them into milestones
and plan out our lives. There's usually some
form of habit tracker, a planner, and
intention setting. While the function
of these journals is slightly different to
me than daily pages, I want to include them in this discussion because there
are aspects of each that I think are helpful to put into our toolkit and decide later
if we want to include. We can keep going on and on, but those are the
main approaches that I wanted to cover
for this class. Now let's dive into actually
designing our daily pages.
4. Design Considerations: Why is this class called
Design Your Daily Pages? Design as a verb, by definition, means to do or plan
something with a specific purpose or
intention in mind. When we design something, we want to start with why. Why are we doing this? What is our specific
purpose or intention? Once we have our why, it will be much clear
what to do when it comes time to make decisions
and make edits. Set your why. Why do you want to keep
a daily pages habit? I'm going to list out some of
the most obvious benefits. Pick up the ones that
resonate with you, and, of course, feel free to
add any that I've missed. To get better at a
technical skill, to get out of creative block, to clear or sharpen the mind, to have time for
self-reflection, to become more grateful, to practice creativity
as self-care, to build discipline, to set and achieve
goals and plans. For me, my purpose and intention
is to build discipline, practice creativity
as self-care, and improve my drawing
and design skills. Another important aspect
of design is to consider the requirements or
parameters of your design. Are there any limitations that
you want to keep in mind? One of the most
obvious limitations for most of us is
that we need to be able to fit it into
our busy daily schedules. I encourage you to do
an honest audit of your day and see where you
can fit this into your life. Maybe it's first thing in the morning or it could
last thing at night. I find that making
it a part of a routine or a ritual at
the bookends of the day, makes it much more likely
that you'll do it. Once you find out
your time of day, set a realistic time limit. If you have lots of
time to draw, great. If you only have 5-15 minutes, that's still better
than nothing. For me, I want to make this
part of my morning routine and I have 20-30 minutes max
that I can devote to this. As for whether to use
a digital drawing app or a real sketchbook, that's, again, up to you. Digital is, of course,
great because you can hit undo and you
have all the brushes and colors in the world
with just one pen , plus it's mess-free. With a traditional sketchbook, you're much more limited. But sometimes working in limitations can really
push your creativity. It's also easier
for many people, including me to
think and brain dump with a pencil and
paper versus a screen, and it's nice to have
one collection of drawing all together in
a neat little package. I work almost entirely
in digital so that might seem like the
obvious choice for me. But actually, I want to keep a traditional sketchbook
for a few reasons. One, it gives me a
simple structure, using some healthy limitations, and finally, it
forces me to confront some weak areas that are easily covered up by the undo button. I play around with a
bunch of drawing tools to see what my ideal
combination would be and edit it down to a
really limited set. Last but not least, try
to make the experience as easy as possible so that
you can do it anywhere. If you're traveling
and can't bring all your drawing
materials with you, it might limit your ability
to maintain the routine. For me, I want it to
be light and portable, but still big enough to be
satisfying and fun to draw in. It's less fun to draw in a
smaller three by five-inch or even the half-page notebooks compared to the larger one. I settled on a softcover
8 by 10 notebook with all my drawing materials
carried in my canvas pouch. Last but not least, we
should set some goals for our design to test
its effectiveness. Ideally, a good design
means that we're doing our daily pages on a
consistent and daily basis. Set a goal. Are you
going to try to do three pages a day like
with morning pages? Or something gradually, say, with one spread a week? A daily practice will definitely build your skills
up more quickly, but starting with something achievable is better
than nothing at all. For me, I realistically
can do one page a day. I've other aspects of
my morning routine that I need to maintain, so this is the best balance
that I can commit to. If I don't hit my goal, I don't beat myself up about it. I just pick back up
when I can and move on. The intention here
with the goals is to keep you motivated, not punish you mentally.
5. Favorite Tools: Here are the different tools that I've considered and
personally recommend. Since I can't cover every
single option out there, I thought it was most
effective to just highlight a balance
of introductory, but tried and true options to give you a good starting set. You can, of course,
always explore more and add more on your own. I work using digital tools and want to share my go-to set, which I think is also one of
the most common setups for many digital illustrators
these days. Here it is. I use a 12.9 inch iPad Pro, the second-generation
Apple Pencil, the Procreate
digital drawing app, and a screen protector
called clear view Paperlike, which helps give
some friction to the drawing experience
and somewhat mimics the feeling
of drawing on paper instead of on a smooth
piece of glass. As for what memory size to get, I get the smallest
size of the iPad Pro because I pretty much only
use it for digital painting, and the Procreate
app files take up an incredibly small
amount of storage space. If you've ever had to deal
with huge Photoshop files, you know what I'm getting at. The entire drawing
experience between the iPad, the pencil and Procreate is really seamless and can finish an entire complex
digital painting within the Procreate app. I have a separate class I'm introducing you to
digital painting. I'm going to do a quick overview
of getting set up here, and if you'd like more details, I encourage you to
check that class out. We want to set it up
for a sketchbook. I would set up a
template size that mimics the feeling
of a notebook. You can use a
default screen size since that's similar
to a sheet of paper. Or you might look for your
favorite notebook and see what the page dimensions
are and set it up that way. For example, if I liked drawing in my 8 by 10 inch notebook, I can create an 8 by
10-inch template. I then group all the pages into one folder so that you can scroll through them
similar to a book. The latest Procreate
version as of the time of this recording has a new feature where you
can see all your layers in a page format and then
scroll through them, which is really nice. As for brushes and colors, I recommend picking just a
few favorite brushes and a few favorite colors to keep
your experience focused. You can organize your brushes in its own brush folder
by creating a new one. You can also save your own
special color palette here. Lastly, you can use
separate layers if you like some flexibility. But drawing all on one layer
it could be a nice way to mimic the feeling of drawing
in a physical notebook. Let's move on to
traditional drawing tools. I wanted to create
an intentional curation of tools so that I can be focused and efficient
with my daily pages. First up, I love this Frixion
Erasable ink pen by Pilot. It actually erases really well. Using a pen is a nice
practice of not erasing. But this gives a nice
compromise for me. Basically, I try to use it as a normal pen as
much as possible, but when I really want to erase something that's
really bugging me, I'm going to go ahead
and let myself erase it. Plus it's actually way nicer
than a pencil in the sense, that the eraser never gets
dirty and you don't ever risk getting those
eraser skid marks. If you were to use
just one tool, I would suggest this one. If you want to use
pencils instead of ink, I really like the Palomino
Blackwing traditional pencil and this one for a
mechanical pencil. I use these a lot when I'm
sketching designs for work. My new favorite thing to use for sketching is colored brush pens. These are the markers with
a flexible brush tip, not the chiseled hardpoint. For now, I like to
use neutrals and grays to keep a simple
color palette and focus on values which just means the overall intensity or lightness or
darkness of a color. By working in grayscale, I'm training my sense
of contrast and shadow without the
distraction of color. My favorite budget options for these brush pens are
Sakura Koi or Tombow. They're also water-based
so they're less likely to bleed
through the pages. Copic is a more
premium brand that I like and it has a much
wider range of colors, but it's alcohol-based,
so it will bleed through most
notebook papers. So lately I've just been sticking to the
Sakura Koi brushes. The thing I really
like about them is that you can create
larger spreads of color and shapes with
them than you can with a pen or a pencil. This way I'm able to create quicker filled shapes and then add the pen in later as a detail versus how you
was doing with before, which is to lay the
foundational drawing, first with pen and
then coloring it in. I prefer this new
method a lot more. Finally, I keep a few items
for small highlights. I love the highlighting
effect of a white Gelly Roll pen on a gray or
tan-toned paper. I also have this
peach colored pencil for blush highlights
on my figures. I sometimes also use
a fat paint pen like Posca or Molotow for
some pops of bold color. I also really like
these Kuretake pens that are made for
calligraphy actually, but there's a black color and different metallic
colors that are really nice for filling
in certain shapes. I also mentioned that I'd
love to use gouache more, but it's hard to carry
around and maintain for me. There's certainly artists who carry around their
paints and ceramics for sketchbook purposes so don't rule them out if you're
interested in them. I might try that in the
future when I'm ready to add more color and practice
painting in my pages. Last but not least
some Washi tape can be helpful for taping off paintings or just
decorating your journal. I use our mini tie
ones as page marks.
6. Favorite Sketchbooks: When it comes to what sketchbook
or notebook to use, there are a ton of different
options out there. It really comes down to
personal preference, but I think there's a
few common things that everyone wants to take
into consideration, such as how big it is and what
the paper quality is like. To me, I think the most
important thing is just to find one that you really like to use so that you stay
motivated to draw on it, but at the same time aren't
so precious about it that you don't want to draw in it because you don't
want to mess it up. I've collected a few of most popular options
here to show you and give you
something to consider. Here is the Moleskine 5.5
by 8.5-inch art sketchbook, the Leuchttum data notebook, and six by 8.25 inches, and the Rhodia dotted softcover notebook and six
by 8.25 inches as well, These aren't as popular but I want to show you
some other options. There's this Rendr No
Show Thru paper notebook. There's French studio notebook that has four different
kinds of paper inside and Stillman and Birn toned notebook and
eight by ten inches. With the Moleskine, the pages of the art sketchbook are pretty thick and smooth. For Moleskine, be
careful not to confuse the art sketchbook with
their regular notebooks. The paper on those
are much thinner these days and I don't recommend
them for this purpose. I'm not a huge fan of the
half-page aspect ratio. I really find that I
prefer this six by 8.25 or eight by
ten inches more. With this Leuchtturm notebook, the covers similar
hardcover to the Moleskine, but the interior pages
are a bit thinner. Like do prefer dotted paper
to blank paper these days. I also like when it doesn't
be very thin and very light. These are a bit too
distracting in my opinion. The thinner pages,
it's not a go. With this Rhodia notebook, it's a nice ivory-colored paper and it's actually brushed velum, so it takes my brush pens a little better than
the Leuchtturm. I liked the dots a bit
more on this design too. This one's a softcover, it feels sturdy and it
would survive in my bag. That's not true of all
softcover notebooks out there. For example, I don't carry
my fringe notebook out in a bag because I feel like it
can get damaged too easily. Speaking of Fringe notebook, I really like the size and the paper quality
is pretty decent. I also liked having four
different kinds of paper to try. A gray line sheet, the yellow grid sheet, white dotted sheet, and
a blank pink sheet. I found that I really
liked drawing on the gray paper as the
little white paper. The tone color allows the white
jelly roll to really pop. Well, I never liked
lined paper in the past. This one's actually pretty close enough to the paper color. I didn't mind them and
I actually think it adds some interest
to my sketches. Unfortunately, they don't sell a notebook with
only grid papers, so this one's not a
keeper for me either. Before I get to the one
that I'm currently using, I want to stop and
mention this Rendr one from crescent
creative products. This one's interesting
because I was introduced to it by one of the
store associates as it's one of the only
sketchbooks where you can use alcohol-based markers like Copic and not get them
marker bleed through. That's pretty magical.
Unfortunately, they don't make any tone
paper ones and again, I don't really like this size. I decided to skip
the Copic markers, stick to something
that would work with a notebook that I do like, which is this Stillman
and Birn one. This is my newest and
favorite notebook and I really love the paper
quality, it's quite thick. My sacred code pens
don't bleed through and it has a slight grainy texture to it that I enjoy drawing on. The softcover is sturdy
enough for me to feel like I could
carry it around. Overall, I've been
enjoying using it. Out of these six, if
I had to pick one, I would probably stick to the Stillman and Birn notebook because it has nice tone pages, feels adorable yet
light enough to carry. To be honest, these are
all great options and yet none of these sketchbooks
are perfect for me. I wish there was a notebook that was like the
Stillman and Birn one, but lightly dotted
or lightly lined. I also wish that I had
the elastic closure and ribbon and back pocket that most of the
other notebooks have. Am I asking for too much? You make this notebook
for me, which I, speaking of which another
option is actually to find your own notebook
using paper that you like. There are a lot of great
tutorials on this online. Some people really swear by
the therapeutic practice of doing your own bookbinding
for something personal, like a sketchbook or journal. But let's save that
for another class.
7. Guided Journals: Now that we have a sense of our
design parameters and what tools are going to use, let's gather some ideas of what our daily pages might include. I've collected some embedded
journals to show you what other people have
done with their templates. Even though none of these
worked for my specific needs, it's suddenly helpful
to take a look and see what we might be able
to pull out that's helpful. First, here's an example of a prompted drawing journal
called draw your day. This one focuses
on drawing again, very similar to the illustrated
journaling concepts and it keeps it really simple. It's very straightforward
with a little drawing in the corner and some prompts
to get you started. I personally don't use guided drawing prompts like
these because I want to create my own prompts
and I usually don't want to do most of
the ones that they provide. I also personally prefer a
blank notebook rather than one that's decorated with
other people's drawings. That said, if you're looking for a good
place to get started as a beginner and just want to take something
really light and easy, I think that these are
really great examples. Another type of guided journal
is a gratitude journal. Kurzgesagt is a popular
YouTube channel and animation studio that makes these fun and educational
explainer videos. They put up a gratitude journal
in connection with one of the videos that they
made explaining the benefits of a
gratitude practice. This one has prompts and
is interspersed with little tidbits of wisdom and these really nice illustrations. I think it's really cute
and really well done. But again, it's a
little too specific and structured for my purposes. These two are similar in that they are for setting
goals and achieving them, but have very different formats. The self journal is put up by best self company
and it's really well designed and has a planner and habit tracker with a
really clean type design. It's designed around
a 13-week framework with goals, a bucket list, benchmarks in different
areas of your life, a habit checker, spaces to plan up your month, weeks, and finally, daily entries with a space
for gratitude journaling, goal-setting and target setting, mood and habit tracking, and some blank space
for anything you want. I think it's really
good you're looking for a very specific guided system for achieving specific
types of outcomes. But again this
isn't the right fit for what I'm looking
for with daily pages. Another example is this
one called hero's journal, which is presented
in this comicy graphic novel format
where the character you, hackles your goals through the metaphor of a
hero on an adventure. If legends are more
of your thing, this makes the whole
experience a lot more fun. For me, I personally
love a lot of this kind of information in a digital format
in my Notion app. I don't need to do it
again for my daily pages. However, I do think it's nice to incorporate
some ideas of recentering on values and
big picture in my template. More importantly, I
just wanted to show you the range of different
types of journals and templates out there so
that you can think about what end of the spectrum
you would like to be on. With all of these,
really great if you want some specific structure
around a specific topic, but say you wanted to
tackle all three things. You wanted to do some drawing, you want to do some
gratitude journaling, and you want to do a habit
tracker and goal-setting. You would need to have all three journals
and probably dedicate a lot more time to
fill in each one out and you have
in a single day. At least that's
how it was for me. What I decided to do is to look at everything
that's out there, think about what I really want out of a daily
page and plot the elements that work for
me into a blank notebook.
8. Elements: [MUSIC] Now that we know
what we're working with, let's get into creating
our own theory pages. I'm going to walk you through the different elements that you consider choosing
from and you can think of it as a scheduled journal cafe
that I'll walk you through and you choose what you want
to put onto your [inaudible]. First, let's consider the
methods of mark making. Obviously you can write like
with a traditional journal, but you don't need to
think of it just in terms of writing
in straight lines, filling up the page
with full sentences. You can also consider just
writing short notes or even little poems to quickly convey sentiments or log events. On the other hand,
if you're trying to practice formal
writing or want to do something more similar to Julia Cameron's morning pages, then add that to your list. Since my daily pages
lean more on visuals, I plan to include
some writing just in small bursts around my drawings. I also make up little symbols
to represent things I want to remember every day
such as my mantra, my North Star and
my work's focus. When I make the little symbols, I actively think about each
element it represents. This way, I can keep them at the top of my mind every day, but I don't have to
write it out each time. Drawing is the next
big obvious one. You can simply
doodle to let loose or draw intentionally
to develop a skill. You can draw from imagination or do a study of a
drawing reference. It really depends on your goals. If you're not sure what kind of approach is right for you, remember to look
back at your why. Are you trying to get
better at drawing? Then drawing from
a reference and doing more intentional studies such as maybe drawing a bird
a day might be more helpful. Or you're just trying to relax and do a bit of a brain dump. Then scribbles and doodles from your imagination may
be the best route. Of course, you can always
test out each approach for a few days and see what feels best for you and your needs. Since my current attention
with my daily pages is to nurture my drawing
and composition skills, I'll be using drawing
references and combining them into
something imaginative. If you're planning to draw, you might also want to consider to what extent you will be bringing painting or coloring
into your sketchbook. We'll use stick to pen line drawings or fill
it in with color, possibly even sketch directly
with paint and brush. If you're not sure, you're
of course welcome to try different mediums and
see what sticks for you. However, just keep
in mind what you can realistically commit to everyday and possibly
take with you on the go. Traditional paints
can get messy. A little plate of lighter
colors maybe handier, in which case you want to make sure you get a notebook that has heavy paper that
can hold the paint. Notebook manufacturers will say what kind of paper the
notebook contains, so just look for one
that says it has watercolor paper or
heavy-duty mixed media paper. It usually has a GSM
that is high, over 200. For example, there's
a stationery company called Mossery that has a watercolor sketchbook
that has 224 GSM paper. Compare that to a normal
mole skin notebook that can't hold
watercolor paints, which has a 70 GSM paper. You might also consider
coloring pencils and markers. There are many options
out there that range from the crayola variety
you used as a kid, which are still great options, to more sophisticated
options that give you more control and nuance
with your coloring, such as offerings by
Prismacolor and Copic. Regardless of what you choose, you can again return
to your why in your own design
parameters to see what makes the most
sense for you. I personally think it helps
to have some constraints, so instead of using every
color and medium available, try to edit it down to a few favorites and a
limited color palette. This also helps to make
your sketch book with more cohesive if that's something
that you're going for. For me, I considered
the different options and decided to go
with an ink pen, a few tonal coloring brush pens and a white gelly rolled pen. This gives me just
enough range to work with while
keeping it simple. Keep in mind that
I draw a sketch on my iPad for all
my other work, so my design parameters and
requirements are really specific to what I want to
get out of my daily cages. Last but not least,
I want to mention the practice of
collaging as an option. This is especially great for visual thinkers who aren't quite ready to draw or want to
achieve more colorful, vibrant page in a quicker way. Collaging can be a great
way to organize memories, collect inspiration and just have fun with
mixing and matching different elements of visuals
into one unexpected spread. You can practice
skills of design and developing an eye for
composition and colors. It's a related yet very
different mindset than drawing and writing that can
also be very complimentary. For me, I might try bring this element into the
future, but for now, I want to focus on my own
drawings and writings and not be in the
headspace of collaging. [MUSIC]
9. Themes: [MUSIC] Now let's talk about some easy go to themes
and prompts for your daily pages just to start you off with
some structure. You of course, add
your own now or in the future when you've built up your habit a little bit more. Let's start off with
something easy and familiar. Drawing or writing about
your day helps you grow in self-reflection and is the most common
journaling practice. Keep this in your arsenal
as an evergreen theme or topic when you can't think about what to write or draw. It can be deep and
contemplative about your thoughts and
feelings about that day, or more hearted, such as
what you ate for lunch or what you wore that day and
everything in-between. You can also incorporate some of the goal-setting and
bullet journaling aspects we discussed earlier, such as tracking your goals
and planning out your day and checking back in that evening or the next day to
see how you did. As I mentioned earlier, gratitude journaling is
a great way to practice nurturing in a positive
perspective and mental health. It can build on top of
daily life journaling by reflecting on what you're
grateful for that day. Maybe something nice that someone did for
you, for example, or a little flower that
you found on the street. Or it can be more holistic
and just focus on a general sense of what
you're grateful for; just health, family and friends. Let's put this in
our arsenal too. Somewhat related to
the first two themes is an emotions or mood check-in. I see this in many guided
journals and self-care apps. It can be as simple as making a little emoji face to indicate how you're
feeling that day. I usually see a range of
five faces from smiley to frowny or take a deeper dive into writing or drawing
out how you're feeling. For me, I like to make just a little symbol to check
in with how I'm feeling, such as a sun for
happiness and a squiggly little
mess for when I'm feeling frustrated
or challenged. Another easy and
helpful theme is to simply pick something
to study and draw. This is great for developing your observational skills and staying focused in
the present moment. It can be an object in your physical surroundings or a photo on your
computer or phone. If you use a digital option, just be careful not
to get distracted by notifications or other
apps on your device. This is the one I'm most
focused on right now, since the priority of my
daily pages is develop a sketchbook habit with a secondary purpose of logging my daily thoughts and feelings. Another theme that I find
to be easy and centering, is to go through
the five senses. In my class of mindful drawing, I explained how using
the five senses is a common practice in mindfulness meditation to ground yourself into the
present moment. You can also use this
with your daily pages. For example, either writing descriptively or drawing
something that you see, you hear, you smell, you feel, or you taste. Again, it's something that's
easy and always with you anytime making it a great candidate for your
daily pages theme. Last but not least, a
fun thing you can try is to write or draw something you've
learned about that day, or maybe you even have a
practice to intentionally learn about something
so that you can use it for your daily pages. Illustrator Mike Lowery has
a great practice of this. Check out his work
on Instagram if you're interested
in this approach. [MUSIC]
10. Studies & Inspo: [MUSIC] For those of you who want to include drawing studies in
your daily pages, I want to dedicate a few minutes specifically to how
I approach this. Since I'm short on
time every day. I think it's most helpful to collect a bunch of
drawing references in batches so you have it ready
to go on a day-to-day basis. There are many ways
you can do this, but here are just a few
ways that I like to do it. First of all, regardless of what format it is you collect, find things that inspire
you and make you feel calm, inspired, and well. This is the best motivator
to draw and journal. It can be anything,
flowers, nature, robots, cars, super cute
sea slugs, anything. Second, find a format
that works for you. On a traditional print side, you can consider books, magazines, or even
free catalogs. I went through a phase where
I use the magazine put up by the clothing company Uniqlo that I just happened
to have lying around. It turned out to be great for studying poses and clothing. I also really like beautiful
coffee table books, so that can be a great
source of reference. Of course, there are actual
drawing [inaudible] books, as I mentioned before, that can be great
if you just want a straightforward prompt
to work with every day. On the digital side, something like Pinterest
can be extremely helpful. Any app that lets you collect inspiration from around
the Internet and social media and organizes them is great for this purpose. I have specific
folders that I call drawing references that I
used for my daily pages. I add and remove
things as I go along, so I always have something
to draw in the morning. One tip I have is to
make it easy to add photos to Pinterest
from your phone. I love getting inspired
by random things while out and about
and only recently made the effort to finally remember to actually add them to my Pinterest so it doesn't
get lost in the sea, that is my camera roll. Third, I recommend editing
and focusing your references. If every day you have to start off making
your big decision, going through all
of your inspiration to find something to draw, it will become unsustainable
unless you happen to have a lot of time
for your daily pages. I recommend just
focusing on one book or magazine at a time or with
just one Pinterest board. Constraints are
your friend here. Lastly, consider how you want to use studies to train your style. You start with a
realistic study of the drawing reference,
but eventually, adapt your studies to be stylized interpretations
of your reference. Compare this
realistic sketch with this stylized interpretation
of a movie scene. You can also mix and match references to create
unique compositions. For example, lately I like
to take flower arrangements and combine them with poses
at disproportionate scales. It creates a new scene that incorporates the
drawing references, but also isn't an
exact copy of each. I love to do this because
I get the benefit of a sketch study while
also practicing design, composition, and working
from imagination. For this exercise, I personally
prefer not to look at other illustrators or artists because I feel like it
overly influences my work, but it's totally up to you. I definitely look at them for other inspiration
in other contexts. [MUSIC]
11. Your Routine: [MUSIC] Now that you have your ideal daily
page template in mind, we need to set ourselves
up for success. I encourage you to
build a habit and a routine that supports
your daily pages practice. For me, I try to include it as part of my morning routine. I like to start the day off with a sitting meditation and a
quick yoga stretch sequence. Then I wash all the digits
from the day before, make some tea and
do my daily page. This is my ideal way
to start the day. But if I don't get
everything in, I just do what I can. I can definitely
feel the difference between the days that I can do my full morning routine
and the days that I can't. In the morning is also
nice because if I miss it, I have another chance
in the evening. If I only plan for the evening and miss my daily
page for that day, then I feel like I've given myself only one chance to do it. When it comes to
building a habit, having an accountability partner or community can really help. For me, that's part of
the reason why I created a cloud house community
so that we can help each other stay
committed to our practice. I encourage you to write down your commitment
and daily routine. It can definitely
evolve with you, but just having it written
down can help you stick with your intentions and commit
to your daily page. [MUSIC]
12. Recap & Example: [MUSIC] Here's a full recap of my process and how
I set up my goals, my daily page, and my routine. This quick section follows the class worksheet
so that you can have one quick point of
reference if you want to come back to this
video in the future. For me, the reason why I started this whole exercise for
myself was because I hit this frustration point
where I really wanted to keep a daily beautiful
sketchbook but I couldn't find either
the consistent practice for it or when I tried I
just wasn't happy with the outcome and it
wasn't feeling like it was achieving any of the goals that I wanted
to set up to do. When I took a step back
and asked myself why isn't this working for me and what is preventing me from
doing it every day, there were a few obvious
things that came to mind. One is that for the
ones that I did like, they took such a long
time for me to design, to fill in, to color, and to make it perfect. I wanted to avoid
trying to make it too perfect and too
time-consuming. On the other hand,
when I tried to just wing it and not think about
it and just scribble, I didn't like how
they turned out, and so that also
made me [LAUGHTER] upset and I didn't want to
keep doing it every day. At the same time, I also draw and do a lot
of design for work. Sometimes when I was doing
my sketchbook pages, I would start to feel
like I wasn't being efficient or effective
with my time and my day. I really was trying to figure
out a way that I could have this self-care
practice that also was building up something
for my work as well. That's where I started
to think about how can I have both the study
aspect of drawing but also incorporate some of the journaling practices
I liked from practices, so just gratitude journaling or those goal setting journals
that I showed you. Then I tried many different ways of doing this before I
finally got to my template. I started with morning pages. I tried bullet journaling. I tried just sketch-booking. I tried following prompts. I did maybe one Inktober
and then I stopped. Then finally, I started
to draw the figures in the catalog that I mentioned
and really enjoyed that. Drawing from the
catalog and writing the morning pages
was something that I found an element of both practice and enjoyment that I felt was a good balance. From there, I honed it down even more because filling
up three pages of writing every day was
too time-consuming for my practice and didn't leave enough room for me to
practice my drawing. What I ended up
with was actually focusing on the
drawing first and then filling it in with just
little notes from the day, little scribbles,
maybe things that I wanted to get off my mind. I also liked the general look and feel of how that
page turned out. It at once helped me achieve
my desire to draw more, to have some daily
writing practice, to check in with myself and
remember my north star and my focuses and have a page that I could do it
on a consistent basis, didn't take me forever, and I was happy with
how it turned out. As for the elements
and references that I incorporated into
my daily page, here's a list of all the things that I think about every day. First I start with a study. I find usually a
portion of a person, either full body or half body, then a flower
arrangement that I like, and sometimes interesting
environments. I combine this into my drawing reference
and usually change some aspects to work on
something that I am focused on, such as facial expressions. Then I put the dates. I think adding a date is
really important to check your progress and also turn it more into a journal practice, and I make my little symbol
to show my mood for that day, such as a little
squiggle or a circle. I include my reference
source, usually Pinterest, and then I add the little
lines that represent, for me, the centering mantras and notes and focuses that I
want to remember every day. That's it. [MUSIC]
13. Final Thoughts: Congrats on finishing
this class. I hope that you
are able to design your ideal daily page and commit to taking the
time for this simple, yet highly effective form of self-care and self-discovery. I encourage you to share
your worksheets and example of your daily
pages with the class. I know I would love to see it. If you enjoyed this class, I encourage you to check
out my other classes. You can also learn more about our Cloud House
learning community at mimochai.com/cloudhouse. Keep in touch by following
me on Instagram @mimochai and @mimizchao or joining
our newsletter @mimochai. Until next time, thanks and take care.
Mimi Chao, Owner & Illustrator | Mimochai
