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Considering the format of daily sketches 2025-09-03-06

The iPad is comfortable to draw on in landscape mode, so for the past few months, I've been drawing my daily moments as monthly calendars. Before then, I used to draw a dozen daily sketches on one page. And long before that, daily index cards.

Some people draw fancier sketches. These ones are ArneBab's.

• How he started in Aug 2022
• Latest one: Aug 2025

I like the varied sizes, colours

Tanny McGregor has a colourful calendar. (5 minutes a day? Hmm…)

• but this is from 2020

Here's Winnie Lim. This one's Jan 2025.

Maybe I'll try putting more time into it. Just doodle. It's okay to slow down.

What do I want from my sketches?

• Moments I might not have photos of: sketches don't have to be photorealistic, although it might be good to get a better sense of what we feel like, and then what we look like
• Playfully stretching my skills
  • details
  • shading
  • colour
• Maybe I can try Procreate? Easy layers, colour fill.
• Stick with Noteful for now - nice to work with notebooks

Feel free to use this sketch under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

I've been regularly drawing daily moments for a while now. Now that I have a little more time for myself, I want to think about how I can make this even better. I think I'd like to start with more colour, especially as the cooler months approach. (I used to struggle with the desaturated bleakness of winter, but now I'm beginning to realize I can add the colour myself.)

I also want to play around with more expressive faces and figures, and drawing more types of things. That probably means doing a daily drawing (or drawings) in addition to my moment of the day, so I can play with things that might not show up in our everyday life. I can start by focusing on cartoony illustrations: simple lines and curves and colours. It doesn't have to be realistic. Fancy shading can wait.

It's okay to keep things simple with a monthly grid. Maybe eventually I'll relax the grid and play with different sizes. Eventually I might start to mix in more text, like the way some people do travel journals. I tend to write a lot of text in my sketches by default, though. Starting with the grid forces me to keep text to a minimum.

Someday I'd like to be able to tell stories in comic form, like Drewscape does. I can develop an ear and an eye for stories. Much to learn.

Links for inspiration:

• ArneBab's daily sketches: I love that he shares his monthly sketches publicly and is still at it. =)
• Tanny McGregor
• Winnie Lim
• Drewscape

Who else should I add to my feed reader?