Recently, I made a tweet saying that people should change their note-taking systems less, focusing only on making a change when it’s actually required, in order to fix something or add a necessary feature.
I was simply projecting my own discoveries through succumbing to shiny object syndrome too heavily myself.
However, a few days ago I ran into one of the scenarios where my note-taking system in Obsidian actually required updating…
I’ve been making some digital guides, and I thought that they might be enhanced by diagrams and graphics within the blocks of written information.
I thought about using the canvas core plugin, but it didn’t have many drawing features that would have allowed me freedom with my own graphics.
Enter the Excalidraw plugin…
Excalidraw is an open-source drawing software that creates stylish and clean graphics, with a hand-drawn sketch feel that I like.
Now, I’d never used this plugin in the past, despite eyeballing it at the top of the list every time I opened the community plugins page in Obsidian, but everything looked good for it to support my graphic creation needs.
I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve seen so far from this plugin. I had no idea there was a way to get a fully functioning illustration interface in Obsidian with so many customisable settings.
There are a lot of preset options for inserting shapes, like ellipses and arrows without having to draw them, which was ideal for creating clean-looking diagrams when I didn’t have any touchscreen pen capabilities…
Additionally, no two shapes are the same, which is a nice touch making the drawings look more as though they’ve been sketched by hand. I like nice detailed touches like this in software, and this made Excalidraw very pleasant to use.
When it came to exporting my images from Obsidian into other formats that I could paste into my products I was greeted with many options, making the process very painless. I could easily save my drawings to PNG format, or simply copy them to the clipboard to move them elsewhere.
The Excalidraw drawings that you create can also be embedded in other files in your vault, the same as normal images and graphics. For me, this made them perfect for fitting into the outlines of the products I’ve been creating, so I knew where they belonged in the structure of the text.
What’s next for Excalidraw and me?
In all honesty, I’m a beginner with Excalidraw.
This article is from my ‘creating basic graphics for a course’ perspective, but this is a very powerful plugin for you to check out if you want all-around sketching and visual note-taking features in Obsidian.
The developer Zsolt is very active, with regular updates to the plugin, and a popular YouTube channel talking about visual PKM, so if you want further, in-depth information about this plugin, check it out.
I could see myself using this plugin further in my university degree, for creating diagrams in lectures and tutorials, and this would be made even better if I purchased some kind of iPad and Apple Pencil combination.
I’m somewhat late to the party with this plugin, so I’m not sure whether this article’s going to have been anything new for most, but to the people who’ve been on the fence or have not tried this plugin yet, check it out! I hope you’ve learned something, and as always, thanks for reading!