February 2026 (aka DATA VIS FEB!)

In my entire 13 years of visual diarying I have never done this before, but: this month is a special edition themed set. When I first started trying to do visual diaries as a regular thing way back in 2010/2011, the trap I repeatedly fell into was trying to make all the diaries be a very specific thing. First I tried doing purely typographic journals. Then only working with a particular medium. But every time I failed and dropped the habit, because I am too flighty and distractable to concentrate on doing just one thing every single day. 

Some might argue that persisting with this incarnation of the diaries for the last 13 years proves that I am not in fact, flighty and distractable, but I maintain that the only reason it has persisted is sheer stubbornness, and allowing myself to almost entirely do whatever I want, including phone it in on days when I really can't be bothered.

But this month I did decide to push myself to do a particular type of visual diary every day (on the basis that one month of slight creative discomfort/pressure is probably not going to force me to quit this huge project now). (I am glad it's over though, and I can go back to messing about next month)

I've been thinking a lot recently about my practice (imagine me saying that in a pretentious artist voice) and for better or for worse, the diaries have become a part of that. Individually they're (usually) nothing much, but collectively, heading towards 5,000 drawings, they're... well, definitely something. 

I've taught occasional workshops around the practice of visual diarying in a variety of contexts, but I've always treated them kind of in isolation to everything else I do for work — intentionally! I originally started drawing them as a way of getting away from my day job, and didn't necessarily want them to become too entangled with my 'real' work.

But for better or for worse, things are more complicated now I teach. I've recently started doing a bit of guesting on MA Illustration and Visual Media (they think I'm a real illustrator?!?! I guess I ammmmm?!?!) and in my main job teaching on MA Design for Data Visualisation, part of what I bring to that context is a more analogue, qualitative, personal approach to data and design that most of the other people who teach.

But I'd been starting to get a bit of imposter syndrome about how little data vis I actually do in my work. I mean, it's not NONE (especially with some of my freelance clients), but for some of our alumni and other lecturers it's like... they live and breath data vis. It's all they do. That's probably never going to be me, but I set myself a challenge at the start of this year to spend one month of visual diaries doing JUST data vis — Emma style. (And obviously I picked February because it's the shortest month, and I wanted to make sure I'd actually get through it!)

Before the start of the month, I made a list of types of personal data that I already have reasonably to hand, if I was stuck for ideas on any day. (Here is some of it...)

But in the event, my ongoing desire to tell the story of each day's events (as usual) won out over my desire to have some pre-prepared content to work with (though you'll see I did use some of these in one way or another).

So... are all of these upcoming journals ACTUALLY data vis?! What even is data? (These are the types of questions I throw at my students even though I don't really have the answers)

Onwards...

At the end of January, my partner was away for nearly two weeks looking after their mum who had to go to hospital. They are the chores standard-bearer in this house, but I kept on top of things, while they were gone... (Or at least, I think I did. They may disagree...)

I had an extraordinarily productive Monday, and felt the need to show off about it somehow. (A frankly alarming number of emails sent)

I've been getting into SOUP (or at least, I was in Jan and early Feb, but a particularly dismal tomato and basil in the canteen later in the month has now formally ended my soup era, at least for this winter)

It's time to go away for over a week!! Is this too many items to pack?! (I did use everything I took, so hopefully not...)

One of my favs from this month — sound day! Sadly technically unscientific as I did not walk around with a decibel-meter all day, but still, it's a representstion... from KJ squeaking at the vet in the morning, to noisy tube trains into work... nearly-napping quietly at V's, to karaoke, and then a very noisy gig at Corsica studios... A fun one, and a noisy one, all in all :)

From there, onwards! Trains across the country, all the way up to good old Hebden Bridge.

I hadn't been back to Hebden Bridge Quaker meeting since I moved away in 2019. It was nice to see some familar faces! I decided to visualise the various different churches/meetings I've been to throughout my life.

I planned to take advantage of my week in Yorkshire by catching up with various old friends. However, my wonderful host James tested positive for COVID on Monday evening, so the rest of the week's plans were sadly changed or cancelled in case I also succumbed (I didn't know when I drew this but Kim and Sylvia wisely decided to cancel too. Better to be safe than sorry, sucks for me though!)

The data vis shows how long I have known each person.

Luckily James has a big house, so the possibility of actually isolating sufficiently that I would not get sick was there. I felt pretty bad about being so anti-social with someone who was so kindly putting me up for the week, but I also simply did not want to get COVID. And so... I hid. (And furiously Vicks-first-defence'd).

Luckily, on Wednesday another housemate arrived who I did not need to isolate from — Rosie the dog. (James's sister's dog). As James was sick, I took over some of the dog-walking reins, and Rosie was an absolute joy. (She does shit a lot though)

 
Crucially, this week away wasn't actually a holiday. (I mean, it kind of was, but say it quietly). I went away because my partner's dad came to stay in our flat in London so they could do MEGA DIY together, and it was just easier all round if I made myself scarce while that happened. (And Hebden Bridge with James was the best place I could think of to do that).

But I still had work to do — a couple of online tutorial sessions, a bunch of freelance stuff, and various other teaching related commitments and writing. It was interesting to see how just being in Hebden Bridge saw my schedule drifting back to how it was when I lived there — typically hiking for hours every day during either the morning or the afternoon, and working late into the evenings. When I think back to my time in Hebden Bridge, I know my ex was sad because she felt like I was working all the time. And I can see why it felt that way, to her... But the fact of the matter is a) I love hiking, and b) I do often find I hit flow state with work between like, 19.00 and 22.00ish. (Which sucks because I don't WANT to work in the evenings, but when I am on my own it does just sort of come naturally)

Anyway, as mentioned, HIKING HIKING HIKING!!! Here were my whole week's hikes (along with weather and some funny place names. Unsurprisingly, it rained a fair bit, though not as bad as I feared.

I had SUCH a nice time clambering around the Calder valley again with Rosie, even if I was sad not to see my friends as much as hoped for. 

I headed home on the Saturday, and was amused by the difference in the altitude tracker on my phone for the one week in Yorkshire. No wonder I was so fit when I lived there...

Had a bit of a wardrobe clearout on Sunday (and wardrobe audit, for the data vis, while I was at it.) Yes, most of my clothes are black. But not all!

Part of the reason I was so keen not to get COVID (which I did ultimately manage to avoid, yesssss immune system) was so I could get home to the Lunar New Year shared lunch I ran for my MA Design for Data Vis students on the next Monday. I asked them all to bring in a local dish to share, and they did amazingly — though I had planned to visualise all the different regions we had represented in their food, when I asked most of them where their dish was a speciality of, they were just like 'uhhhh we eat this everywhere in China', haha

Here it is, the data vis you've all been waiting for: rating all the different toilets at LCC. (Apart from two I've literally never had any cause to visit, though I am now curious, maybe they're the best)

Having another classic 'I seem to be earning a reasonable amount of money so why am I so broke every month' moment, and then realising the answer (it's dog) (each note represents £10 per month)

 

The fun challenge of cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen (V's kitchen is quite nice actually — it has little lights that go on when you open the drawers) (Don't think I've tried to do an isometric drawing since A-level Design Technology)

 
It's FREE BREAD TIME at Samaritans!!! (Free bread and terrible sticky pastries, but apparently some people like those too)

 
A particularly good bird day on me and KJ's walk prompted this one (the Merlin birdsong app is very helpful for an amateur like me)

Perhaps it is not appropriate to think about DATA during Quaker meeting, and yet

(Quite a talkative one) 

Tutorials with our MA Design for Data Vis students about their proposed final project topics, and splitting them into supervision groups (i.e. which students I specifically will be working with, based on how well equipped I am to support them with their themes). Some very fun topics, and I enjoyed trying to do this messy diagram visualising the connections between all of them.

 
One of my new year's resolutions was to leave Spotify — it has somehow been both easier and harder than expected. Actually exiting the ecosystem, transferring playlists etc was A-okay. But tidal absolutely sucks ass (shitty offline capability, loads of buffering, lag). I gave up on it midway through the month and moved over to Qobuz instead, which is marginally better, but still a far cry from Spotify's seamless experience. Ugh. I suspect I will not stay here either. I am considering other options! (Like just... not streaming at all?!)

Thinking about... chips. (After some debate between V and I over whether matchstick or shoestring is the skinnier one). A good date is a date where you get to eat two different kinds of chips AND have ice cream. (We also went and saw some quite good art but apparently I decided chips was the more worthy subject matter here)

 
Very nice spa time with Heidi at the fancy hotel near the O2, would definitely return (£33 for 4 hours evening access is a pretty sweet deal)

How much do I love Pochi? Let me count the... Days (20, in the last year) (Thanks to Monzo data for this one!)

My most ambitious vis for the final day of Feb — a month long dream diary! (The only one I proactively gathered data for an entire month). Take a closer look. Dreams are wild. I like food. 

Well, that was a fun month, and I hope you enjoyed it as well :)

Regular non-data service will resume next month... 

Hourly comics day 2026

Year 13 of hourly comics day... time flies?!

You can see all my previous hourly comic days here...

2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

I quite liked my last couple of year's 4-panel, sized for instagram approach, so I stuck with that. For the last few years I've also been playing with adding flashes of colour, so continued that as well. I also like to do some cheeky cheating, which is facilitated by working digitally — for example, re-using certain illustrations with minor modifications, and occasionally dropping in amusing photo references (like the stuff I was watching on TV). All of which make it possible to ACTUALLY draw 17 comics in one day!

So... here they are.

January 2026

January has been a weird month of very nice and not very nice all happening at once. As always, doing my best to keep on drawing it all, whatever happens.

My last blog showed the first couple of days of the year, in which I pondered on last year's goals, and set goals for this year.

 

My first proper drawing of the year was of a messy but interesting kind of day in which it snowed, and — presumably distracted by said snow — I let my guard down and allowed Jessie to get into a fight with another dog (luckily no one was hurt apart from me?!). In wrestling her off said dog, I twisted my little finger so badly I was convinced I'd broken it, and so, went to A&E (to find out I had not broken it). Walked home from A&E in a surprisingly good mood considering I'd just wasted 2 hours in A&E, and had a moment of being awestruck by SUPERMOON (which was so super I stopped two men who were walking by in the opposite direction to say 'Look at that moon wtf', and we all stood in the middle of the street enjoying it for a few minutes)

It was bad!!! (It's now the end of January and it still hurts a bit!!)

Anyway I enjoyed my Christmas break, and as always, found it somewhat hard to get started again at the start of the year. Got very excited when I actually motivated myself to do some freelance work.

 

So the Southbank Centre's winter light installations were... not very good. But uhhhhh I maybe went to see them on a somehow-date with a friend I've had a lil crush on for a long time, and we maybe had a bit of a kiss, and if that isn't a nice new year treat for Emma idk what is :)

(Despite entering into my current relationship claiming to be polyamorous, a combination of COVID, dog-loss-grief, work, and hormonal imbalance have mostly meant I've felt little inclination towards any extracurricular romance for a long time. It's nice to find one of the few crushes I have had is apparently reciprocated... 🤩) 

 
Still not quite fully back into work mode (i.e. term starting again) — had a nice little outing to Ashford to visit the lovely Rebecca Wigmore (who I had been wanting to go and bother for ages). It was very foggy and rainy, but we had a lot of fun.

Also found the time to go to the British Library's 'Secret Maps' exhibition, which was very good (though considering it was the closing week, it was astonishingly over-crowded, and quite difficult to actually get up close and spend ages poring over the maps, which was what I really wanted to do). I'd also hoped they'd maybe take a slightly more creative/wider interpretation of what constitutes a map, which they kind of did, but I think it could have gone further. Anyway that sounds negative but it really was great!

Then the next day me and my friend Heidi went to see a couple of exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery, which I had somehow never visited before. (The exhibitions were okay, the vegan fish and chips I had for lunch at nearby Unity Diner were better).

Self-care Sunday ahead of 'Oh-man-it's-time-to-go-back-to-work Monday'

And sure enough, slammed immediately in the chest with TASKS. Before christmas I was offered some teaching work on MA illustration and visual media, which is very exciting, because me?! An illustrator?! Really?! (She says, having literally made an illustration every day for the last 12 years and regularly taking on professional illustration commissions pretty much throughout that period) Anyway I was super psyched to get started, BUT did not realise the teaching on that course was starting, uh, next week. I thought I had longer. And I needed to write content. Yikes

 

And then, with perfect timing (I did not plan this when I did the previous day's illustration), the slight rug-pull of not being offered any more teaching work on BA User Experience Design. That course has mostly been my home for the last 2 or 3 years, so it's sad that my time there seems to be coming to an end, but such is the nature of associate lecturing — you are somewhat subject to the ebbs and flows of students and staff. And to be honest, given how overwhelmed I am feeling, I have come to the conclusion it's probably for the best, even though I will really miss the undergrads! (And I may yet be back there one day, but not this academic year).

There's that good (terrible) girl

I really love Wilmot's Warehouse. This was my second time playing it and I somehow couldn't believe that it would work as well as it did the last time, and yet somehow, once again, we nailed it. Here are some warehouse items, absolutely none of which in any way have any kind of rude meaning...

Went to the sauna with George. Still did not manage to fully plunge myself, but ALSO did not overheat and feel dizzy like last time I went with Vicky, so that's some kind of victory on my journey to becoming a pro-sauna-er.

I'm just so over periods at this point. (I have been trying a period disc for the last couple of periods, anyone else had a go?! I wanted it to be great but though it's way more comfortable to wear and insert than the cup, it also just leaks all the time. Am I doing it wrong or is my body just incompatible?!)

Enjoyed the Danielle Braithwaite Shirley exhibition at the Serpentine gallery — it was super playful and I liked the way it tried to force strangers to interact with one another (I did indeed interact with strangers)

I helped my students make some zines, but I did make one or two mistakes with the template I gave them, ack, amateur hour. To apologise for essentially forcing them to do some extra folding work due to my errors, I baked muffins (which were received to critical acclaim)

 

STRESS DAY! My partner's mum called them, asking them to go up there and help her out (she lives in Yorkshire). Turns out when they got there that she was so ill she had to go straight to hospital, and my partner is... still there?! Hopefully to return soon?! I don't mind being on my own but it was a bit of a shock to the system to have it happen so suddenly (For one thing there were way too many carrots in the fridge for someone who does not like carrots at all to eat) (One of my proudest moments since their departure was eating all the carrots).

Taught my first session with the MA Illustration students — all about visual diarying as a practice! I did this not-very-good one in session while they were working on theirs (and coloured it later digitally)

Despite having an absolute ton of work to do, for the first three or four days after my partner went away, I entirely could not focus on anything, as I was so worried about them and their mum, and what might happen next. (She is... hopefully okay?! Or as okay as she can be?!)

But I do really, really love teaching on the illustration MA. It's so much fun and so different to my main job on MA Design for Data Vis, as well as my previous work on BA UX and BA Graphic Media Design. with courses like that there's a lot more... right and wrong, somehow? Whereas with illustration it's kinda like... as long as you're making a ton of work, and talking and thinking about it... you're probably doing good?! There's probably something interesting there?! There's probably something to pull out and say 'Yes!! That! More of that!"

The individual tutorials are particularly fun for this kind of thing.

Still though. So. Much. To. Do. 

Back to working weekends for a while I think, lads...

Trying to up my Chinese learning this year with an AUDIO BOOK. Here's me walking through the country park on a grey January afternoon saying over and over again that yes, I do in fact want fried rice and a cup of tea (我想要炒饭和茶) (Wǒ xiǎng yào chǎofàn hé chá)

Did you know that parakeets, in their natural habitat, eat rocks off cliff faces which help them digest their food by grinding inside their stomachs... and in urban areas, they substitute for this by eating mortar off the sides of buildings. (I'd heard about this behavior, but saw it for the first time on a house on the other side of the street to me!) Pretty cool but I hope they're not also eating MY mortar...
 

Another good old fashioned hand drawn visual diary, drawn in session with my MA students while they worked on their stuff.

You know when there's a pot that could be stirred... and you desperately want to stir it... but mostly manage to restrain the urge... 🙃

I'm fine on my own until something involving technology breaks. (My shame) (I fixed it in the end)

 
It's been ages since I got to play Dead of Winter, so it was super fun to introduce it to a whole group of new people. Many thanks to George for inviting me to her 'Queering the Apocalypse' group! (They were very good, and we won, which basically never normally happens on a first play?!)

Anyway, it's mostly been a nice January but I do miss my partner and am excited to have them home again (hopefully Monday?!) Still, I am pleased about the amount of fun/social stuff I managed to squeeze in this month, hoping it can continue into February and beyond...