Assessing my February Weeknotes Experiment

This year began with a big intention to illustrate more of my life in my sketchbook. I’ve created those kind of pages haphazardly for years now, but I thought I would commit to a more rigorous practice. I got going in January but I challenged myself and followed through in February to create daily entries called Weeknotes where I painted one thing about my day each day and compiled them into a weekly sketchbook spread.

(I explained the project in my February Cover page post and shared spreads each week here on the website and on instagram.)

Now it’s March and after a full month of that Weeknotes experiment, I have some thoughts. And also new ideas for where I’m headed.

First, I loved painting these little illustrations. I stuck to goauche all month with the intention to express something of my days in an abstractified way (less realistic drawing), and it was great practice.

I learned a lot about painting with this medium as well as about my style. The seven pics in this post are my favorite from this Weeknotes month of illustrations, and I think there is a throughline. There’s a certain graphic quality. I like bold, high contrast color and shapes, and I guess I like clean lines. And a bit of quirkiness.

And yet…as these last two images created later in the month reveal…huh Maybe it doesn’t have to be so loud. And maybe I can go with more texture and layers. I think I like these two pictures the most.

All in all with this Weeknotes experiment, I gained a lot of clarity. Yes about painting and style, as I said—but also, more importantly about what I really want out of an illustrated journaling practice. And guess what? It isn’t to create daily illustrations of something in my life.

As much as thought I wanted to do illustrated journaling as part of my art practice, I realized this month that what I REALLy want, what lies beneath the surface of this ongoing creative desire to express myself—is 1) to create with paint and other art mediums because I love it (loving doing being enough of a reason), and 2) to express not necessarily what I do in my days, but what it feels like. To follow how I feel, in other words, rather than what I do.

So - I think I scratched that itch for documenting my days. I want to focus more on the pleasure and practice (and development) of mixed media painting and creating daily pages in my sketchbook that express rather than document.

Now, some would say (and my Inner Critic would lead the charge) that this is me quitting ("Again.”) But actually, let’s reframe: This is me evolving.

And actually? I’m proud of myself.

March 2026 Art Practice — and what happened in February

Okay! So March is here and I’m ready to go with my art practice intentions for the month. Here’s the cover page in my I made in my sketchbook and post on the front of my personal website, too..

And here’ are the January and February cover pages for reference.

I opened the year with a lot of experimentation. I’ve made daily art practice a cornerstone of my life for years now, but I was at a place where I didn’t really know what I wanted to make anymore, and didn’t know what I wanted my art practice to look like.

I’ve been in this place for a while. I’m totally committed to creating art—I love it! But…I’ve been feeling at loss for what, exactly, I want to make. So in January and February I focused on experimenting as a way to find out.

It turns out that what became the greatest focus of these two months was variations of illustrating my life in my sketchbook. And it was the February Weeknotes practice, particularly, where I learned something very important about my creative preferences: documenting my life doesn’t hold my attention. It’s not what I’m interested in spending my creative time doing. What I loved doing Weeknotes was simply the drawing and painting.

Okay, so not so much a discovery and a remembering. Oh yes. I really do love to draw and paint, especially in a more abstractified style that I want to develop. So that will be my March project. I’m going to draw and paint a series of wonky things in March. Let’s see how many pictures I can paint this month.

As for expressing myself in some daily way, I am also still committed to creating daily pages in my sketchbook—but I won’t be focused on documenting life. Coming to the page each day to create rather than document is a practice that has always served me well on so many levels—it’s where I learn, it’s where I explore and express, it’s where I meet myself where I am, fully present to the range of experiences that flow and float and scream through me onto the page.

And that practice, that daily experience of creating for myself, is enough.

So that’s March: Daily Pages and Painting. Hopefully a lot of it!

Weeknotes '26 - February 15-21

Okay, rounding the corner of this February experiment that actually began the last week of January, this makes week four. This week, I decided to lay out each day into a comics-style grid one one sketchbook page, painting and writing directly.

As opposed to week 1 where I collaged into a composition painted cards and text, week 2 where I painted and wrote my days in a more haphazard weekly spread, and week 3 where I collected a week’s worth of 5X7 paintings, written text over-layed on Procreate.

I am going to wrap up the experiment this next week with a final review of this month-long project, so I won’t get into what worked best or worst or what I learned, but I will say, for this week…the grid is okay. It does kind of tell the story of my week. Kind of. I don’t know.

I get a sense that I will get more out of this week’s work (and maybe the whole project) after some time has passed. I’m finding it hard to tell its value to me right now. Except I will say, I do like how the two faces turned out (Oliver and me).

Text reads left to right:

[SATURDAY]

“Congregation,” Jacob asked us in his one-man show at Berkeley Rep ([How] Shakespeare Saved My Life), “What would you choose - safety or freedom?” What a terrible choice.

[MONDAY]

Why is it so satisfying to make color copies on cardstock and slice them down edge by edge using a rotary cutter?

[TUESDAY]

We convince ourselves the rain has stopped, but as we drive down our street it pours again. We turn around and go home.

[WEDNESDAY]

After a busy, grey-skies morning, I settle into the purple hair to read, Oliver climbs into my lap, and suddenly the sun comes out, sunshine finding us through the windows. We both close our eyes.

[THURSDAY]

As Sherry and I walked in the sunshine pas the roaring creek below the street, I didn’t at first realize the water hitting my face wasn’t creek mist kicked up by the wind.

[FRIDAY]

Archie do it! he said, asking to be picked up. So i did and one by one, his little fingers switched on the electric candles on the mantel.