A New Way to Journal
and the twinkling of tiny signs
(this infinitesimal twinkling of) tiny signs
I’ve been working a little differently in my journal this year.
It started in the Spring, and, amazingly (for me!) has continued through the summer and Autumn.
It began as a way of simplifying the visual journaling process by coming up with a simple method, or ‘recipe’ as I like to think of it, that would enable me to record a lot more of the things I see and do.
My ongoing problem with art making (and life, come to think of it!) is that I tend to over complicate the process of getting from A to B. I will always take a little detour to ‘E’, with a short visit to ‘R’, sometimes even X, Y & Z, finally making my way back to B (which was there all along, exasperatingly tapping its little foot and looking at its watch)
All of this exhausting ‘to-ing and fro-ing’ ultimately gets in the way of my art making and tangles up my brain, so thinking about this process as a recipe to follow has been really helpful for me.
Build your scaffolding…with little boxes!
So, to begin with, my ingredients are a graphite or coloured pencil (to draw with) and a few colours (paint or more pencils). My method is to draw little boxes all over the page and fill them in with interesting things that I have seen, done or noticed over the month (but could be over a day, week, holiday etc).
Some of you might remember The Story of a Garden or The Story of a Walk — workshops I taught a few years ago that first touched on this way of working as a way of making observational drawing less daunting, drawing little bits of things to make a whole. That’s what this is, really: fragments of a day, a week, a month, coming together to tell a bigger story.
It doesn’t have to be little boxes, it could be little blobs of paint or circles. Just something to give you a bit of structure and a platform on which to work.
Over the summer, I began to round off each month by gathering the things I’d noticed, collecting them together on a single sketchbook page. The number of boxes varies, but they’re always there: a wobbly scaffolding that breaks down the overwhelming space of a blank page into small, manageable pieces.
It’s a hybrid really— part comic, part pictorial poem, part journal.
This system has come as a relief because when I don’t draw, and download my observations, I notice a build-up (or, rather, a ‘cluttering’) as if my brain and body start filling up with undocumented memories, ideas and notes, which all create a loud visual and verbal noise in my head.
I’ve also been keeping written (and grammatically-questionable) journals this year too, which I finds helps to calm and order things in my mind, but drawing seems to work even better. Small drawings, especially. They allow me to get things down quickly when I need to, but also slowly if I want to and have more time. It’s become a gentle meditation on the month gone by. (I’ll be teaching a workshop on this in January… details below!)
Dreams of the every-day
On the theme of recording the snippets of life, a couple of weeks ago, I visited an exhibition at The Holbourne Museum in Bath called ‘Dreams of the every-day’, a collected show of works by Winifred Nicholson and Andrew Cranston. On the drive there, I found myself thinking about the fragments of our everyday lives, how ordinary moments can feel so small and yet so essential in telling our own stories.
It’s a theme that circles back in my work again and again: the quiet importance of the mundane and trying hard to capture the beauty of what’s overlooked.
So, it was a real delight to find the same thread woven through that exhibition, beautiful, quiet paintings that held glimpses of domestic life, pattern, light, and stillness. They felt like visual echoes of my own thoughts: that it’s the small things that give shape to the bigger picture, the infinitesimal twinkling of tiny signs.
On Winifred Nicholson’s work, Andrew Cranston writes:
There’s a certain hesitancy in her touch, doubt even you could call it, that is so gentle. A warm human wobble.
I see it in the paint of Chardin and Corot and Bonnard and Vuillard and Morandi and Gwen John and Christopher Wood, too. It’s a company of quiet painters that don’t always make major statements but nevertheless are perhaps more powerful because of that.
‘A warm human wobble’, isn’t that a lovely way to describe someone’s style?
I left feeling inspired, as if I’d been gently given permission to keep going, to dig a little deeper into my own fragments. I particularly liked Cranston’s use of a book cover as a canvas for his paintings which were so gentle and sensitive, yet heavily laden with multiple layers of paint and varnish.
Maybe that’s all any of us are really doing in our work; noticing, collecting, piecing together the small stories of our life.
If this way of working speaks to you, I’ll be teaching an Introduction to box Journaling workshop in January. It’ll be a gentle, creative space to explore this approach for yourself, a little pocket of calm creativity to start the year.
All the details for that, along with other upcoming classes, are below. I’d love for you to join me if it feels like something you need xxx
Upcoming Workshops
Through the Winter Woods: Tunnel Book Workshop – 28th November
Step into a festive, wintry woodland in paper form! Build a layered tunnel book, capturing the quiet magic of the season. Pre-recorded and self-paced, so you can follow along whenever it suits you. Grab a discount: Introductory price until 5th December
Introduction to Box Journaling– 15th January 2026 7-8.30pm GMT
A gentle, exploratory workshop where we’ll play with tiny squares, small sketches, and little snippets of daily life. Perfect if you want to start the year with a creative ritual, learning how to collect and layer fragments into a story that feels uniquely yours. Pay what you can
Read, Watch, Make!
This article about homemade advent calendars is joyful! I loved reading about the dolls house miniatures calendar… and what joy to unwrap a pamphlet about cults, a sachet of Angel Delight and a big bag of Quavers! Last year, I created an advent calendar workshop where we made tiny pockets and a little paper village with people! It’s here if you fancy it x
I’m currently compiling a personal list of ‘Nice Things to Do on Dark Evenings’ and was delighted to read Helen Stephens article What to Do with Your Hands in the Autumn
I’ve been listening to The Telepathy Tapes Podcast and it’s awe inspiring. A groundbreaking series that challenges everything we think we know about communication and the human mind, inviting listeners to step into a reality where the impossible is not only possible but happening every day. Start right at the beginning with Season 1, or skip ahead to this The Conciousness of Creativity: Are ideas alive and do they choose us?
Over the last month I have read and enjoyed:
On my ‘to read’ list for this month:
Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
Comfort and Joy by India Knight
Before the Coffee gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
My annual listen to The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater will begin and, as always, I will tune into As the Season Turns
I always love to see that work you make as from the classes. Here’s a few examples xx
Dates for your Diary
Through the Winter Woods: Tunnel Book Workshop – 28th November (Pre record, access from 9am GMT)
Work along: Through the Winter Woods - 11th December 7-8.30pm GMT (Live on Zoom with recording)
Introduction to Box Journaling– 15th January 7-8.30pm GMT (Live on Zoom with recording)
Work along: Box Journaling - 22nd January 7-8pm GMT (Quiet co-working with company, sharing at the end. Free if you’ve booked onto the above workshop. Live on Zoom with recording)
With warmth,
Lucia x
When my daughter was a uni, a good few years ago, I reused one of our historic playmobil advent calendars and posted each day on line for her. This was soon liked by various friends and 13 years on the virtual adventure calendar continues. It always features incursions by the puffins and sabotage by my glamorous assistant aka husband.
I love this way of working, it allows me to work quickly and less carefully! It feels freeing and less overwhelming than facing a blank page.