Art Diary For Life
Introduction
Creating an Art Diary for Life
Old photos, sea shells from holidays we once went on or simply pure memories - looking back on our past lives can be many things. From joy to regret, the past often has a very special effect on us, that is, if we dare to confront ourselves with it. Today's post is about a fun and creative project/concept to help create more meaningful and personal check points to better remember the essence of our past lives and the discoveries we made along the way - an Art Diary for Life (A.D.F.L.).
This Post Covers
- ❓ What it is
- 🗄 The structure
- 😎 The benefits
- 🚀 Getting started
- ✅ Step by step checklist
What it is
When remembering the past, there are different ways to do so. We can use our memory, photos, videos, written reports or objects. All of these options have their pros and cons and different levels of accuracy in terms of capturing the real nature of an event or thing in the past. An Art Diary for Life is simply another approach for capturing the present moment. The difference: Instead of trying to capture physical circumstances, the attempt is to capture thoughts and ideas. An A.D.F.L. is a collection of multiple seperate art collections which again consist of multiple individual artworks. Created every few years or so, each collection tries to visualize the most fundamental and prominent thoughts, ideas, beliefs or wishes of the creator during that phase of their life - one idea per artwork.
The structure
To better understand what this looks like, I created a free downloadable PDF template giving a clear overview over the structure of an Art Diary for LIfe. Since every art collection covers a bigger phase of your life, I like the idea of calling the individual art collections "Chapters". The number of artworks per collection simply depends on how many core thoughts, beliefs and understandings you want to visualize. Always focus on the bigger picture during this process.
The benefits
Maybe you are not a born artist and that's fine. You don't have to create your A.D.F.L. yourself, but more on that later. There are plenty of other benefits on offer.
- 1️⃣ Creating your art diary for life confronts you on a deep level with what it is you think most about - the true depths of your personality and mind. Turning a thought into visual elements is challenging, but it's a great exercise to creatively untangle messy thoughts and start better understand yourself.
- 2️⃣ Creating an A.D.F.L. is not about capturing some perfectly accurate reality. Neither the individual pieces nor your ideas behind them will ever be a perfect resemblance of what is truly going on in your head. But having a series of art collections over the span of your life containing your most fundamental thoughts does help creating clarity over the core streams of thought in your life. This may end up leading you to what it is you truly care about and what it is you actually want to do with your life.
- 3️⃣ You and people around you are going to appreciate your efforts in the future. Whether or not you are still going to agree with the ideas and believes of the younger versions of yourself looking back on past chapters of your A.D.F.L., being able to refer back to their most fundamental thoughts gives perspective and must also just be pure nostalgia. For close friends and family, it means they can get a much deeper insight into your life's thoughts and legacy. During a lifetime I am sure everyone comes up with at least one great thought worth sharing. If you prefer to keep your A.D.F.L. private, that's perfectly fine.
- 4️⃣ Creating a A.D.F.L. with an external artist is great leadership and communication practice.
- 5️⃣ And if it isn't obvious, it's simply a fun and creative process to build an A.D.F.L.
Getting Started
If you are not an artist yourself, a good starting point for creating the first art collection of your A.D.F.L. is to find an artist and setting up deadlines for the project. This way there is a frame to the project and the only thing left to do is to follow through with the creative process.
If you know a creative friend, ask them if they are willing to create the art diary for you. To keep them committed, pay them for helping you out. Alternatively, platforms like fiverr.com are a great place to look for talented people fitting all kinds of budgets. Make sure they have good communication skills and are preferably willing to keep in touch over text or video to make sure your ideas get visualized properly.
Obviously though, it is your job to create the rough concepts for each artwork, to decide what kind of visual elements best represent the topic of each artwork and what rough art style you are aiming for. Inevitably, the artist is going to add their own flair and that's fine.
If you are capable of creating the artworks yourself, good for you. Setting up deadlines may still be a good idea and should not be seen as a restriction. Try to look at them as way of giving the process structure.
After finding an artist if you need one, deadlines could include (1) deciding on the final ideas for each artwork, (2) deciding on elements of continuity, (3) finishing designs for elements of continuity, (4) deadlines for finishing each individual artwork of your collection and (5) transferring payment and files. With those setup, you're ready to get creative!
Step by step checklist
Having read this post, there may still be a few questions left unanswered regarding the specifics of the creative development of an Art Diary for Life. This step by step checklist goes into some final details to help guide the process. For the rest, simply follow your own intuition and make it your own!
- 🪨 Physical or digital art collection?
- 🪨 DIY or hiring a professional?
- 🪨 Deadlines?
- 🪨 What are my current most fundamental thoughts, ideas, beliefs, understandings, perspectives on the future...?
- 🪨 What artwork titles best represent these ideas?
- 🪨 What visual elements best represent these ideas?
- 🪨 Elements of continuity, yes or no? (e.g. the same header design for each artwork of a collection, same visual framing, same color palette, a logo, ...)
- 🪨 What art style fits my current perspective on the world? (abstract, realism, high/low saturation, messy or minimal, straightforward meaning or hidden meaning, art pieces with text elements or without, ...)