Nikki Hawkins

I think keeping a daily illustrated journal has actually been quite life changing for me because it’s enabled me to have a creative outlet every day (even or especially when I have very little time) which definitely makes me happier. It’s something I don’t have to think about much, but I often find myself looking forward to adding certain things that have happened in my day to it, or thinking ‘how am I going to illustrate that?’. I first started one on the 19th July 2022 and this is my 3rd finished book.

I have no rules for it. I let myself do as little or as much as I want – I add receipts, photos, other ephemeral some days whereas others it may just be a list of what I’ve done or has happened. There is nearly always a little bit of typography as I find that really relaxing to do and I have started to note down the weather each day as I find when I look back over the months it’s a nice thing to compare (this time last year kind of thing) also, surprisingly the mundane is as interesting to look back on as the more exciting! Little snippets of thoughts/feelings are nice to add too.

There are certainly times/days where I’ve felt very unmotivated to put my daily entry in, because I’ve felt there’s not been much to write about but I’ve stuck with it and I honestly cannot imagine my life without it. I don’t share these pages on my instagram, they are private (well, they have been until now!) and there’s something very liberating about that! I’m not doing it for anyone else but me and I love the process of stamping the date, writing out the day and letting each page evolve as I remember what’s happen and decide what to add.

With each day/book, I’m finding more confidence in my style and ways of approaching things which is helping me with my art in general. I don’t want each page to look like a carbon copy of the day before – after all, our moods, feelings change from day to day as do what we get up to so I treat each page individually and at the end there is a lovely eclectic mix of pages.

What’s been incredibly special, is that my daughter who is now 11, is also keeping one and has done since about a week after I started mine. She has a little desk set up next to mine so we can share all our art supplies and she has continued to add a daily entry without missing one which I’m really impressed with. I don’t put any pressure on her to do it and there are days when she says she doesn’t want to and that’s fine! There are days I don’t. On those days – we don’t do them! We just make sure we add that missed entry in when we next sit down. We also don’t always do it at the same time. It all just seems to work well.

My next journal which I start tonight is a smaller size, I was finding the A5 a little too big for one day and ended up putting at least two sometimes 3 days on one page which has worked well visually but I thought I’d give a smaller size a go and see how I get on. I will keep you posted.