You can start a visual journal tonight with three supplies and no drawing ability, because the first five pages ask for colour, shapes and lines, never for a likeness of anything. Each page takes ten minutes. Page 1 is a single colour, page 2 a key of six shapes, page 3 one continuous line, page 4 a colour wash with three words, and page 5 a seven-box week. By the end of the first week you have a record you can read back, which is the point.
In Write Your Way, chapter 6, I teach three visual methods: visual mapping, collage, and art journaling, where watercolour, drawing and a few lines of poetry share one page. Page 4 below is that last method cut down to ten minutes and stripped of the paint. The other four pages are simpler still.
Quick Answer: Buy a small unlined notebook, a black fine-liner and eight coloured pencils. Make one page a day for five days, ten minutes each: today's colour, a symbol key, a feeling as a line, a wash with three words, and a week grid. Write the date and one word under each page. At the end of the month, lay the pages out and count the symbols.
Definition: A visual journal is a dated record of your days kept in colour, shape and line, with a word or two underneath, in a notebook you can read back.
Key Evidence: Kaimal, Ray and Muniz (2016) measured salivary cortisol in 39 healthy adults before and after 45 minutes of free art making. Cortisol fell for about 75 percent of them, and prior art experience made no difference to the result. That is the best evidence that skill is irrelevant, and it concerns 45 minutes of art making.
Key Takeaways
- Three supplies: a small unlined notebook, a black fine-liner, eight coloured pencils. Skip anything that needs drying time.
- Five pages in five days, ten minutes each: colour, symbol key, line, wash with three words, week grid.
- The only text required is the date and one word under each page.
- Once a month, fifteen minutes: lay the pages out, tally the symbols, write the two most frequent on a sticky note, find the darkest week.
- Kaimal (2016): cortisol fell for about 75 percent of 39 adults after 45 minutes of art making, regardless of experience. Nothing supports "five minutes boosts immunity".
Supplies
| Buy | Fine if you have it | Skip |
|---|---|---|
| A small unlined notebook (A6 or A5) that opens flat | A watercolour pan set and one brush | Anything that needs drying time or a desk: acrylics, glue, gesso |
| One black fine-liner | A grey brush pen for shading | A large sketchbook; it makes the blank page bigger |
| Eight coloured pencils or crayons | A glue stick and one magazine for collage later | A 48-colour set; choosing eats the ten minutes |
The first five pages
One page a day, ten minutes on a timer. Under each page: the date and one word.
Page 1: today's colour
Pick the one pencil that matches the day and fill the page with it, edge to edge, pressing harder where the day was heavier. Date it. If two colours argue, give each its share of the page. Over a month these pages become a barometer: you will see which weeks ran red and which ran grey without reading a word.
What you will notice: the pressure of the pencil tells you more than the colour. A light grey page and a hard-pressed grey page are different days.
Page 2: a symbol key
Divide the page into six boxes. In each, draw one shape for a state you know you return to: a tangle for confusion, a wave for overwhelm, an open door for possibility, a flat line for nothing, a spiral for worry, a dot for calm. Draw each once, badly, and label it. From now on you copy these six shapes onto other pages, which is what makes the monthly tally possible.
What you will notice: which of the six you drew biggest. That is usually the one you expect to use most.
Page 3: a feeling as a line
Put the fine-liner on the left edge and draw the last hour as one continuous line, without lifting the pen: fast where it was fast, cramped where it was cramped, off the page if it went off the page. Then add one symbol from page 2 where the line changed.
What you will notice: where the line loops back on itself. Loops are the moments you replayed.
Page 4: a wash with three words
Colour a loose area with the side of a pencil, or a wet brush if you have the pan set, with no plan for what it is. Look at it for a moment, then outline any shape you can see in it with the fine-liner. Write three words on the page, anywhere: one for what happened, one for the feeling, one for what your body is doing right now. If words will not come, start with the body: a tight jaw or a held breath is easier to name than the feeling behind it.
What you will notice: the third word is the honest one. The first two are what you would tell someone; the body word is what is true.
Page 5: a seven-box week
Draw seven boxes in a row. Colour today's box with today's colour and add one symbol; leave the others empty. Fill one box a day for the rest of the week. This is the page you will keep making, one per week, after the first five are done.
What you will notice: the box you skip. A blank box in a week grid is louder than a blank page.
A sixth page, if you want structure
Lynda Barry's Syllabus (Drawn & Quarterly, 2014) puts the lesson plans and exercises from her Writing the Unthinkable workshop into print, on a method built around the link between the hand, the brain and spontaneous images, written and visual. If the five-page sequence feels too loose and you want the same boxes every day, take one of her daily exercises as page 6 and repeat it.
The ten-minute session
- One minute: pick the page type (colour, key, line, wash, grid) and set the timer.
- Seven minutes: make it. Stop when the timer stops, even mid-line.
- Two minutes: write the date and one word underneath. That word is the only text required.
The monthly look-back
Fifteen minutes, once a month, with the pages laid out in date order on a table or the floor.
- Count the page 2 symbols across every page. Write the two most frequent on a sticky note and put it inside the front cover.
- Find the darkest page and check the date. Write down what was happening that week, one line.
- Find the week grid with a blank box and do the same.
- Look at the pressure on the colour pages. Note whether the hard-pressed days cluster.
The sticky note is the finding. Two symbols that dominated a month tell you what the month was about, in a form you could not have written down at the time.
When this does not work
- Every page looks the same. You are drawing the day you expect, before it happens. Move the session to the evening and make page 3 (the line) for a week, because a line is hard to fake.
- You keep waiting to feel creative. The pages above need no inspiration; they need a timer. Make page 1 on the flat days. A flat grey page dated and filed is a real entry.
- You are comparing your pages with pages online. Those are made for viewing. Yours are made for counting. If the comparison persists, keep the notebook closed to everyone, including yourself, until the monthly look-back.
What the evidence says
Kaimal, Ray and Muniz (2016) found lower salivary cortisol in about 75 percent of 39 adults after 45 minutes of free art making, with no relation to prior art experience, media or gender. Trials specifically on visual journaling are small, and nothing supports the claim that five minutes boosts immunity. The practical case for a visual journal is narrower and holds: it lowers the bar to starting on the days when writing feels impossible, and it gives you a record you can count.
Why Visual Journaling Matters
A written journal stops on the days you cannot write, and those are often the days worth recording. A colour page takes ten minutes and no sentence, so the record continues through the weeks a written journal would leave blank. The symbol key turns that record into something you can count, and a count of a month's symbols shows a pattern that no single page, and no single evening's writing, could.
Related reading
- Junk Journaling Techniques
- Start Journaling When You Hate Writing
- How to Start Mood Journaling
- Creative Journaling
Sources
- Kaimal, Ray and Muniz (2016), Art Therapy – Cortisol lowered for about 75 percent of 39 adults after 45 minutes of art making; no difference by prior art experience, media or gender
- Lynda Barry, Syllabus (Drawn & Quarterly) – The published lesson plans and exercises from Barry's Writing the Unthinkable workshop, on a method linking hand, brain and spontaneous images
