This exercise came from my encounter with Javier at Michael’s Arts and Crafts, and was inspired in part by this post from @tieandjeans (Andrew Carle), who sent me this photo from MakerFaire on September 30, 2012:

@andrewbwatt did you see the co-lab tent yesterday?Felt like a response to many of yesterday’s questions @collabnyc twitter.com/tieandjeans/st…

— Andrew Carle (@tieandjeans) September 30, 2012

The link leads to a Picture that says, “Drawing is Thinking.” There’s more text than just that, but it’s a reminder of Dave Gray’s Forms, Fields and Flows (which if you haven’t learned it yet, please do.  It’s critical to any sort of design process to learn to draw.)

Anyway, the exercise:

Visual Journaling:

You need:

• A Notebook
• A small collection of pens or pencils (pens are better)

This exercise will help you:

• Become a better artist
• Become a better thinker
• Develop a stronger memory
• Improve your own personal discipline and self-control
• Give you tools for communicating with other people visually
• Help you think through problems in three and four dimensions

How often to do it:

• Daily
• 15-20 minutes

Procedure:

• Take a page in your notebook.  
• Date the page, and the time.
• Draw a frame on it, somewhere. It must be at least one-quarter of the page, but no more than three-quarters of the page.
• Draw something that fills the frame:

1. An abstract design
2. A picture of something near you
3. A picture from a reference photograph
4. Some event that happened in your day
5. Something from the Drawing List
6. A copy of a picture you like.

• Fill the remaining page with a written description of your day:

1. What you drew
2. Where you were when you drew it
3. Why you drew this object
4. What you were feeling or thinking when you drew it.

• Do for thirty days.

The Drawing List

If you don’t know what to draw, you can select a thing from this drawing list.  The drawing list is composed of sixty items in two columns: Sunlight and Shadow. (if it’s daylight, draw from the Sunlight column. If it’s after sunset or before dawn, draw from the Shadow list.) In your drawing journal, go to one of the last pages and draw a frame for the list.  Then write out the list in it.

Shadow

1. Bread, or pastry
2. Your dinner
3. A clock, stopwatch or watch
4. A stairway
5. A jumble of pens and pencils
6. Inside a medicine cabinet
7. What’s in your pocket?
8. A person you admire (a hero)
9. A person you hate (personal villain)
10. Something with a sharp edge
11. Some thing, and the mirror reflecting it.
12. The lines in the palm of your hand.
13. A picture in a frame
14. A young man
15. A middle-aged woman with a child
16. Something in the refrigerator
17. A man pushing a baby carriage
18. A piece of fruit
19. What you wore today
20. An angry animal
21. A tree 
22. A young woman
23. A wide open place, and what’s on the edges
24. A person on a skateboard or bicycle
25. An old man with a cane
26. A blue-collar worker
27. Someone crazy
28. A single leaf
29. A flower
30. A piece of machinery
31. Three’s a crowd

Sunlight

1.  A shoe
2.  A woman
3.  A bag or purse
4. A pet
5. An article of clothing
6. A chair and table
7. A scientific or technological object
8. An object made of glass
9. A place with water
10. A building
11. A wall or a fence or a boundary
12. A wild animal
13. A walkway, path, trail or road
14. A meeting between two people
15. A solitary person thinking
16. An accident
17. All or part of a musical instrument
18. A really fast car
19. A costume you’d like to wear someday 
20. A superhero
21. A party
22. A protest
23. A solider
24. A game in progress
25. A white-collar worker
26. A blue-collar worker
27. Something dangerous
28. A horse
29. A box, a trunk, a shelf, or a cabinet
30. A book, a DVD or CD case, or a magazine
31. A couple in love

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