Chris J Wilson

I’m finally pushing myself to try graphic recording (Like sketchnotes but LARGE).

I’ve been sketchnoting for years in notebooks and on an iPad and I have a decent approach in place but despite having a few fancy graphic recording pens for a while, I’ve barely used them (and never for a full recording).

Earlier in the year I create a simple web page for enquires for my graphic recording services and then I got two in quick succession. But I had no paper based large scale graphic recordings to show as examples.

So I set myself a challenge — 30 practice graphic recordings in 30 days.

This has the dual goal of building my portfolio and building my skills. Unfortunately, I really need the second one!

It turns out that getting the size adjustment right is REALLY hard. The difference in pen size and how hard it is to write in a large scale is really tricky. Plus I’m just not used to the size of my pens nor having all the colour pen options that I have. And finally, you can’t just add a procreate fill layer if you want to add a creative background!

All this means that the whole process is different to my paper sketchnotes in my notebook and my iPad recordings.

Still, I’ve learned a lot from each of the two tests that I’ve done so far and I’m sure I’ll continue to as I progress through this challenge.

I suspect I won’t do 30 back to back days as there will probably be something that comes up in the process, but I will do my best to “not miss twice” and avoid extending the time frame.

Here’s my second recording for reference (the first was really bad!)