A Day in the Life

So when we were given this project, it was a couple weeks before my portfolio interview and I barely thought about it at all. Three weeks went by before I actually decided to start doodling some ideas that I could finish quickly. I didn't want to just whip something up to get it done, but I needed something fast, yet also quality.

First, I wanted to make some sort of "housefly productivity chart". That was the first idea I came up with, and I sat on it for two or three weeks! I didn't really want to do it though after a while...

So I started doodling some other ideas, trying to come up with something I knew well and that could be at least entertaining to look at. I chose a day in my own life, although I didn't think that that'd be whatsoever interesting, so I jazzed up my quotidian routine and put a surreal twist on it. Some of the things I included are inspired by real life events, but most of it's fake. :)

I envisioned showcasing my mundane, day-to-day life with a chronological set of simple comic boxes. I wanted to keep the style loose and experimental, with the focus being more on the actual events of the day than making it look super-pretty. Not to say that I slacked off on the drawings, but these were the initial sketches based off of my log:

Once I decided on what activities I wanted to include, doodling the ideas out was probably the most time-consuming part. When I finished that, I immediately figured out how to organize all of the panels and set to redrawing them on the illustration board.

After I finished sketching (most of) each panel, I began outlining all of the text with a fineliner, and out of curiosity of what the whole thing would look like, I started filling in the outside border with black.

I continued on. I didn't want to just leave the whole thing in black and white, but I didn't want to use colour, either, because I thought using colour would just be an unnecessary distraction from the simplicity of the story. So I met in the middle and used my greyscale Prismacolors to shade it.

And then I was done! I finished shading and added some necessary final details and boom, a day in my life was revealed.

Maybe you're wondering why I decided to draw myself without any hair? I'm not 100% about that myself, but I knew that it just didn't feel needed. I feel like the little homunculus that is me in this comic isn't based off of my physical appearance (although she does have features of me), but my personality, based off of my everyday life and how I respond to things. Hair is the kind of thing that can really, REALLY affect how someone looks and is perceived, and I wanted myself to be as simple and relatable as possible. I wanted her to be me, but with little assumptions based off of appearance.

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. I've been doing a lot of things digitally lately, and it's nice just being able to physically draw something out. I hope that people can get a few laughs out of looking at this, and that they can relate to at least a few things!

Here's the full diary:

• 6:45 awake
• 7:03 release toddler sister from sleeping cage
• 7:10 consume consumables
• 7:22 feed giant snowcats
• 8:39 enjoy an 8 a.m. class
• 11:51 lunch
• 12:10 drink from the Giant Tea Lake
• 13:02 play Chromeo for the pigeons
• 14:12 meet a giant fish
• 15:47 make art voluntarily
• 18:33 woo attractive male
• 19:26 attend book signing
• 20:55 procrastinate on homework
• 21:36 ceremonially burn smthg
• 22:10 observe astrological conjunction of Venus and Mars
• 22:29 put toddler sister back in sleeping cage
• 22:40 listen to Holst's Jupiter and cry
• 23:47 brush teeth
• 23:49 dream wildly