Exploring Artistic Diaries in Human–Human and Human–Robot Co-Painting

Robotic systems are increasingly involved in creative practices not only as tools, but as collaborators shaping artistic processes over time. Little attention has been paid to how artists make sense of how this collaboration unfolds. This paper examines artistic diaries as a methodological lens to explore lived experiences of painting, comparing human–human and human–robot contexts. We report a longitudinal within-subjects study with eight professional artists who engaged in six co-painting sessions with a human partner and with an autonomous painting robot. Artists completed open-ended multimodal diaries combining written reflections, sketches, and visual annotations, analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Findings show that human collaborations are framed as relational and negotiated, marked by attunement and shared authorship, whereas human–robot collaborations open a creative door, inviting exploration, surprise, and reflections on the robot’s agency. Diaries reveal temporal trajectories, offering access to experiential dimensions of creative human–robot interaction