COMIC JOURNALING
A Comic Journaling Exercise to Kickstart Your Day
Try this simple journaling technique for mental health
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What do you do to start your day? Exercise, journaling, or nothing special at all? I was in the last category. But I found out that a short reflection on the day ahead strengthens my motivation and the feeling of control over my life. I want to share with you my comic journaling technique for mental health, especially suited for non-artists and anyone looking for a low-effort, high-reward mental practice!
This exercise is divided into two parts. The first part makes you think about positive aspects of your day that you are looking forward to, and the second part makes you tackle the tasks you are not looking forward to doing today. By using the power of visualization, the objective of this exercise is to make you see that you are ready to kickstart your day, with the ability to deal with all the different tasks lying ahead.
What you need for this exercise
The only thing you need is a paper and a pen/pencil, analog or digital — anything works. You can also first read everything and see if you feel like doing it yourself.
All the drawing skills explained
For all non-artists here (artists, feel free to skip to the next section), we will start with a few basic drawing skills you will need. First, try drawing a few facial expressions: happy, sad, worried, or angry. Inspire yourself in my drawings below and feel free to copy my lines. Pay attention to the eyebrow and mouth shape: they are most indicative of the emotions we feel.
The last skill is somewhat specific, but you will need it for the second exercise. Practice drawing cute puppy eyes as explained in the image below: You start out with two circles, add two smaller bubbles inside, and color the rest of the circle in black.
