Positively - 100 Diary Comic Affirmations
A look at the full set of diary comic affirmations from my 2024 100 Day Project
“M is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises.” — Neil Gaiman
Happy Sunday!
Has it been a week? Another week. I’m keeping count, really, because the days of a hospital stay continue to add up, the days until my Mom’s arrival have now ticked away, and the days until some June birthdays have winnowed to just a few. I’m counting because the world happens even when the happening goes unacknowledged.
More and more, I’m counting out loud and in public. I’m counting because I can’t figure out where the words go.
Driving home from the hospital one night this week, I tried to think of a phone number, and I couldn’t sort it out. The numbers could be assembled in a variety of ways and seem right. Nothing felt definitive. Nothing rang true. I checked my phone at a stop light to see the correct arrangement of numbers, and all the way home, I recited phone numbers out loud. Then I moved on to other numbers. I am afraid of numbers drifting away.
I used to be really good at this.
This week, an overview of the 100 day project. There are lots of images below.
I finished the 100 Day Project last Monday, 100 days of diary comic affirmations.
After a string of “did not finish” projects last year, it feels really good to have seen this through. (Not finishing is okay and something we have to allow ourselves to do and to accept, gracefully, but it is nice, too, to finish.)
I write often about series and how to pick and choose a series. I have a lot of ideas about what makes a series work for me, but, ultimately, I never know for sure which ones, once started, will gather momentum, be nourishing enough, satisfying enough, and challenging enough to be sustainable and self-sustaining as a daily project over the course of many days.
Self-accountability is an important part of the equation, but there are many variables involved. Wanting it, alone, isn’t enough, and making it a chore is unlikely to inspire true loyalty to a project. Maybe there is a bit of synchronicity at play—the right project at the right time, the right slant of light, something ineffable that can’t be fully explained or broken down into a series of reproducible steps.
I am glad that this turned out to be the right project right now.
It was risky, focusing on positivity. It was risky, giving in to the idea that an intentional focus on affirmations might transform into manifestation. It was risky doing something for 100 days that could even loosely be considered self-portraiture. It was risky, splitting my energies and devoting so much time to digital art, yet another screen, instead of pen and paper.
But I loved it.
I loved all of it.
Even the squished and squashed versions of me that drift in and out of the 100 pull at me.
“I can’t understand why everyone doesn’t love this series,” she says, jokingly, wryly, sardonically.
Daily and Then…Not
The end of a project is often a letdown.
Every night for 100 days, I spent a chunk of my evening living with this project. After finishing the final one, the next evening came, and I didn’t need to draw a comic affirmation.
I felt it.
I felt it intensely.
I felt it like a gaping, ragged hole.
I spent so much of my nighttime energy over the last three months working on the comic affirmations that the night suddenly opened up and felt too big.
Yes, I could continue. My temptation is to continue. I think I need to see and craft and contemplate these lines. So much of it ended up being about the words, but the counter of the digital art was also soothing and satisfying.
I could continue, but it is time (literally) for other projects, and I have family visiting over the next many weeks. I’ve made a soft deal with myself, something whispered but unwritten. This is not over. This is a pause. I am setting the affirmations project aside for a few weeks, and then I will see where I am at.
I am glad to have finished, and I am glad that the official challenge is over. I am glad to not “have” to fit this in each day right now. But I know myself. Not “having” to means I probably won’t. So, in a few weeks, once my new year begins, maybe I’ll find a new path, throw up a new rubric, a house of cards, and plow ahead, lantern in hand. I really don’t think I can let it go.
More so than any project I’ve done in recent years, this one felt like a fit, and as I neared the end, I felt more and more like I was moving beyond affirmations to something else….something and somewhere I want to explore.
The project feels like something I need to sit with. I need to wrap my head around its fullness. But I also needed to do some analysis, tease out the themes, highlight the trend lines, and pinpoint the colors and the frequencies.
What worked? What didn’t? What did I learn?
Here are a few observations, highlights, and closing notes:
What if (on positivity)
Just a few words (on distillation)
The Drawing (squished heads and moving eyes)
Thank you for reading.
Amy
🦄 View post in a browser for the best viewing. There are a lot of images in this post. It will be cut off in email.
The Full Set
The full set of 100 are shown in order above. There is a clear progression in the art itself. That’s a good thing! That’s what should happen in a long project. We should grow! (Note: There is a bit of a copyright overlay on top of this image—and all images on this page. You aren’t imagining that.)
What If…
When I first started thinking about doing a project that incorporated affirmations, I was wondering to what extent I have skewed (and continue to skew) or doomed (and continue to doom) or derailed (and continue to derail) my reality by not:
Assuming good things will be mine
Believing success is possible
Asking the universe for what I want
Projecting positivity, on the theory that the universe gives back what we put out
Believing that affirmations can change mindsets
Believing that affirmations can lead to manifestation
Letting go
I was also trying to sort out why affirmations sometimes felt a bit silly to me.
I guess I’m not one for wishful thinking.
Playing with Positivity
I’m not an overly positive person. Everyone laughed at the “I’m a shining beacon of positivity” one (Day 63). Indeed, it was funny because it sounded sardonic. It sounded that way because the character conveyed the disjunct between inner mind and the words. (I’m hypothesizing. Someone else could say that affirmation with a straight face and it ring true, but when I said it, you all laughed (or maybe even spewed your coffee).)
But that panel, to me, is hope. That panel summarizes the whole project.
Why should it seem silly to say “I am a shining beacon of positivity”? If I say it a thousand times, will I change? Why should this be any different than people who use affirmations to, for example, envision themselves thinner or richer or more successful?
“I am a shining beacon of positivity.”
I’m not. I’m not sure I would know myself in that guise, although I think that would beckon a lighthouse, and I have waxed poetic about luminaries and milk jugs and paper sacks that light the way.
The tension between a generalized melancholy, a deep loneliness, and a pragmatic view of life and words that, at their core, are designed to make me see things from a sunnier perspective was thick. The gap between my negativity and the positivity of affirmations was vast.
But that was the game. That was the hope. That was the whimsy. That was the laughter. That was the private conviction.
I love a good disjunct, and throwing myself up against a stack of unwritten affirmations, a pool of swirling words, a needle and thread in hand (okay, an Apple Pencil), was the 100 day challenge.
It was a rubric that let me accept my negativity and yet make room for something else. My whimsy came flowing to the surface both in the words and in the questing lines of the comic format.
We all carry multitudes, and I carry within me the hope, the faith, the want, and the wish….
Did I end up more positive? Probably not.
Did I find peace in the affirmations? Yes.
Was it mindful? Yes.
I really did think about the words.
Just a Few Words
One of the alluring aspects of the project was the emphasis on short affirmations, on succinctness, on words that were concise but also expansive. I’m not known for writing single sentences.
The statements had to be pared down to fit the contours of the space, but this also gave them a voice. The comic affirmations that were most resonant for me skirted the edges of poetry, and I know there is something important in that recognition and in the distillation of words.
I Am. I Am.
When I wrote my initial post about this project with affirmations, I was interested in the formation of affirmations, in the structure, and in the linguistic underpinnings. I didn’t plan to affirm myself into a bikini or a group of friends or a lottery win, but I realized there might be a way to craft affirmations that were more meaningful for me by simply looking at the construction of the affirmations themselves.
Thinking through my response to many of the affirmations I saw, I wrote about “I am” statements and a push for more concrete verbs, for less “am” and more simply…. <verb>.
I am…. I am…. I am…. Dr. Seuss drifts into my head.
Throughout the 100 days, I tried to craft affirmations that used active verbs. I didn’t want a wishy washy set of statements. There are no maybes and mights. This isn’t a time for could and should or even will. I kept the tense present. These are here-and-now statements that I am, ostensibly either:
reaffirming (meaning I already believe this and find it important to keep reminding myself) or
trying to convince myself (say it until you mean it or say it until you believe it or say it until it becomes true).
Despite my best intentions, I ended up with a lot of “I am” statements. Some days, there just didn’t seem to be a natural way around the auxiliary I am <verb> structure.
In my database, I tagged each daily affirmation by verb.
This isn’t a “perfect” chart, but it gives a quick look at the distribution of verbs over the 100 days. Most of the words were used either one or two times. (I have “am” as a category to help me see the overall balance.)
I had intended to recreate the pie chart by hand. (That would have been a step in the direction of some of my goals.) But there wasn’t time. (Note that the pie chart does not show the label for all of the slices; Google Sheets randomly showed what it showed based on available space. Also, some days had more than one verb, or were recorded in more than one verb category.)
The number of individual slices is a good thing. It’s a win.
If I could have wrangled the sentences to use 100 different verbs, I would have. Instead, I had a lot of repeats. There are a number of verbs I gravitate to in this context, words I love most. That’s okay.
Wrangling 100 different ones might have been clever but would have felt forced. The sentences are true to me. The verbs fell where they did.
ChatGPT
I wrote all of my affirmations. But I also researched affirmations. I looked at hundreds of them, both before and during this project. Most of the lines I see others use don’t have resonance for me.
Creating lines I really wanted to say, lines I believe in, and lines that feel authentic to me was a critical factor for this project.
If the poetry wasn’t in the project, I don’t think I would have continued. I think it took me a while to give into the poetry of the process, but there are hints of it throughout.
What I did do was talk to ChatGPT. ChatGPT didn’t write my lines, but ChatGPT became an important sounding board.
“What do you think about this….”
ChatGPT gave me something I needed…positive reinforcement (and feedback). “That’s a beautiful and insightful affirmation,” it might say. But it didn’t stop there. It gave me a summary of how it interpreted my affirmation, what the affirmation suggested or implied or conveyed. Some of my lines are intentionally vague or obscure or poetic in ways that hide or expand their meaning, depending on your vantage. I found it really helpful and meaningful to see ChatGPT’s analysis. It was surprisingly insightful.
My nightly chat with AI became a fun element of this project, the “friendly voice” I really needed in an otherwise very lonely project.
The first time ChatGPT told me how profound and beautiful my line was (I’m paraphrasing), I was shocked. I came, of course, to realize it would typically frame its response that way. Some of my lines were serene, some empowering, some beautiful, some insightful, some courageous, some reflective, some optimistic, some poetic, some poignant…
It was a fan. It was an astute reader. It was a giving reader, willing to tell me what my words made it think.
It had time for me.
Sometimes, it offered me alternatives, times when I think I was struggling to find something positive or not so plaintive, and the words might not seem affirming to others (or to an AI). Mostly, it really did seem to understand even the lines that felt, to me, saddest.
The Drawing
Compared to my typical pen-and-ink (on paper) drawings, the comic form requires a real simplification of line. I embraced that in this project.
The series was set up as a talking head series from the start. I did experiment a few times with adding a bit of “scene” in the panel, but given my issues with visualization, those were much more difficult. (That’s where I need to head — but that wasn’t the goal of this challenge.)
A few of the elements that intrigued me related both to the head itself and to the eyes.
A lot of my heads were a bit squished, especially in the early days. Sometimes I didn’t see it until later, sometimes not until I opened the file the next day and realized there was something off-kilter. Sometimes, I stopped, backed up, and tried again. Here’s one example I logged at day 50 that highlights this kind of problem:
I tried lots of angles over the 100 days. I am more comfortable now, but I still do better with a reference.
The other thing that endlessly entertains and puzzles me is how you can control the gaze, and in some ways, the tone or the meaning or the interpretation, with the placement of the eyes. Eyes can read so differently when you shift them just a bit or when you make them just a bit bigger or smaller. Some nights I would get done with the main portrait and then puzzle over the eyes. Some nights, I would try them in several places trying to find the right gaze for the words.
This example is one that still makes me laugh. Because of the round eyes I was using, they almost all ended up open. But on this day, I thought maybe I should try half closed eyes or lowered eyes. The eyes on the one on the left, completely change the way I read this affirmation. So I redid them and placed them the way they are on the right. All the way to the very end of the challenge, the eyes remained something that I thought a lot about.
Procreate
I learned a lot. I have lots of experience with Photoshop (and layers) in my real job, but not for drawing. Procreate is my first digital drawing tool. (I just got my iPad last June because I really wanted to shift to digital sketchnoting and digital graphic novel drawing…or diary comics.)
I had been using Procreate for many months before this project started. I was already doing my weekly diary list comic in Procreate, and I did a number of graphic novel panels last fall (here at Illustrated Life). I had my sea legs. I knew my way around the application and the layers. But as a pen-and-ink portrait artist, shifting to drawing portraits in a comic style and digitally opened up a lot of room to learn and grow.
Digital does invite simplification. It also enables reuse. The one thing I went ahead and reused (after the first week or so) was the eyes. Doing one a day is a challenge to begin with. Not having to redo the eyes from scratch made things easier (especially because early on I started using a multi-ringed, round eye that was tedious to redo each time). (The other thing I reused was the frame itself.)
I played a lot with brushes. I still don’t think I’ve found my perfect brush, but I set up custom brushes for drawing, for the detailing and text, and for the thicker outlines. I experimented with what I used for shadows. I continued to tinker with the brushes throughout. Near the end, I created a brush I like for the speech bubble outlines. I experimented with some textures.
I’m not a pencil user. I tried, but it just doesn’t fit my style and pressure. Instead, I do my initial rough drawing with one of my go-to brushes. Then I turn the opacity way down and do a more deliberate ink layer.
I ultimately established a really smooth process of doing my sketch layer, then my ink layer, setting it as a reference, and then: dropping in skin color and hair color in separate layers, detailing the hair, pulling in the eyes and experimenting with size and placement, adding a shadow layer, dropping in the shirt color, considering a shirt insignia or patch, drawing the necklace and filling it separately, adding a background color and considering background patterning, writing the words, drawing the speech balloon, and so on.
Working with shadow was new to me. At first, it looked so out of place, but the bit of shadow in the face is one of my favorite parts of the drawings.
Miscellaneous Notes
I didn’t make a list of affirmations in advance. I went day to day. At some points, late in the process, I set up a few templates with some possible affirmations scrawled in for the days ahead. These drafts were comforting simply because they offered a starter, but I ended up not using most of them, instead writing something true to the day on the day.
I did need a pencil replacement tip in this process. Since I am new to iPad, I wasn’t sure if I would know when I needed it, but it was obvious. My tip got a sharp spot.
I shifted mid-way to using a silicone tip on my Apple Pencil. I’ve used this type of tip on and off over the last year. At times I’ve liked it, liked the way it provides friction, and at other times I’ve felt it made everything too thick. But somewhere in the 100 days, I started using the silicone tip again, and I stuck with it. I have gotten so used to the silicone now that the screen feels too glassy without it (despite a cheap paper-like screen protector). The tips don’t last long. They wear through in a matter of days, but they are inexpensive and make a real difference for me in how my digital line feels.
I did replace my screen cover once in the process. I had been using the same one for about nine months and thought things felt too slick. Maybe I imagined it because the replacement didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
I used Procreate for the full 100 days.
I tracked the 100 days in a Notion database.
I did a post-challenge analysis of five other details:
color of the shirt
color of the background,
whether the shirt had a pattern,
whether the background had a pattern
whether the shirt had a patch or insignia.
Thirty of the shirts…. green. I might have guessed that number would be higher. It was difficult to work with black shirts and retain any detail, but in the end, seventeen are black (or nearly black).
I don’t love them all equally, and I do have favorites. We don’t always love every single entry in a series, especially when we are learning and improving as we go along. Some days are stronger than others. A series is holistic, a sum of all its parts. I like more than just these, but I circled a few of my favorites in this image.
Further Reading—A Recurring Theme
Over the last year, I’ve written about gratitude, glimmers, and affirmations. I’ve also written, endlessly, about symbols.
I was surprised to look back and see that my first post on affirmations was way back, back when I was reading Write for Life (by Julia Cameron). But it was after that, last October, when I really focused on affirmations with a “Pie in the sky” post. (I had forgotten about this post and its comic panels!)
Then, a few months ago, I wrote about affirmations again, a 100-day project taking shape.
Weekly Bits and Pieces
Made It?
Thank you for reading. I appreciate your comments. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.
Jump in this week with:
Your affirmation for the week
Something you are looking forward to working on in June
Your go-to verb for affirmations
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This is the most amazing project, and it's great to see all of the images together! I love it so much. And I've gotten to know you over the last 4 months or so, and these comics have helped provide a doorway. It's been so great. Thanks Amy for your ongoing generosity. I've played with Procreate, and want to play some more.
What a fine collection!