My Hobonichi Art Diary 2017

I have a big confession to make ... I didn't even open my daily art diary until the 20th of January! But it's okay. I'd been feeling quite meh about filling in my old Hobonichi throughout most of December last year, and I was mainly focussing on my work for the Flare Up exhibition. In fact, it was probably the first thing worth noting that happened to me for the year anyway. I also felt a sudden urge to keep a garden diary -- noting down the activities I do in the garden each day, and I thought I may as well do that in my Hobonichi.

Oh, and sorry for the quality of the photos. I'll try a different set-up next time.

This year I bought the double-size (A5 size diary), and ever since placing the order I'd been kicking myself. It seemed intimidatingly large -- how am I going to fill up so much space every single day? The moment I started working in it though, all that dropped away and I was glad of the extra space. As you can see, I usually write quite a lot, even when I didn't have a very eventful day. It's fun to record the little things that happened. In the spread above (left), I was feeling lethargic after working at the shop, so I just drew some of the products I'd unpacked that day.

I went to the Melbourne Zine Fair, which was incredible. Several of the subsequent pages record my thoughts about the zines as I was reading them. The next day, we went to a new cafe in our suburb and had gluten-free Lebanese style pizzas. They were amazing so I had to draw them!

Last weekend, we went and bought a new bed! It doesn't arrive for 2-4 weeks as the base is custom-made. We got to choose the colour; we chose a seafoam green to compliment the lavender-coloured wall in our bedroom. I can't wait until it arrives! The linen set is entirely from my imagination, by the way.

I had been thinking about how my art has changed since I've been working in different media. In my art journal I use a lot of collage, especially layering long narrow strips to create borders. I wasn't doing that at all in my art on canvas, and I must have missed it because I started doing it using washi tape and stickers in my Hobonichi.

A few days ago my friend had a baby! I printed out the photo she sent to me and pasted it into my diary. She is a genuinely cute baby.

A couple of times, I've printed out batches of photos from my Instragram to decorate my diary. I decided to do this after seeing one of the youtubers I watch who has one of those cameras that prints polaroids on sticker paper. I went the cheap route instead! It took a little fiddling to get the size settings right, but it's been worth it. The only downside is that if I want the photo to be on the page of the day it corresponds to, I have to break out the printer just to print one photo. It's much easier to print them in batches, but I have to stick them on a different day. It's still fun though.

My old Hobonichi from last year is still not finished. I skipped quite a few days when I was tired, etc. Plus there are a lot of pages at the beginning and end which have monthly and weekly calendars, etc and I would like them to be decorated to before I can declared it finished. So I have the two diaries side-by-side and work on both of them together most nights. I covered the old diary with some leftover wrapping paper, using this method from Sailor Mimzy (video). It doesn't require any cutting or glueing, and it's very easy.

To help me fill in my old diary, I've been doing this drawing challenge. I don't draw every day, just when I feel like it, and I don't worry too much about making the drawing very complicated if I don't feel up to it. I'm currently on Day 5 and it's been fun.

I've been watching a lot of youtube videos for inspiration. My favourites are Sailor Mimzy and RainbowholicTV. Rainbowholic has a new feature where if you post your Hobonichi on Instagram with her hashtag, she features a few at the end of her videos! If I can take some good photos, perhaps I'll enter.